


Not a Fairy Tale

by baeconandeggs, chanyeoloving



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Angst, BAE2017, Fantasy, Fluff, M/M, Royalty, Smut, made up fantasy world, slight mpreg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-26
Updated: 2017-05-26
Packaged: 2018-11-04 23:56:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 39,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11001660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baeconandeggs/pseuds/baeconandeggs, https://archiveofourown.org/users/chanyeoloving/pseuds/chanyeoloving
Summary: It should have been an ordinary evening at the bookstore but one forbidden book later, Baekhyun finds himself in another world. And King Chanyeol over there is everything short of prince charming.





	Not a Fairy Tale

 

 

 _When the skies and the grounds were one, filled with cobbled pathways and covered with baby blue cherry blossoms, scattered stones made out pale white marble, and the land’s people were feeling warm hearted at the start of a year-long spring, the king had fallen in love._  
  
_The king fell, the cherry blossoms weaving through his hair – strands red as fresh roses, but soft to the touch – blossomed beautifully with pink petals ready to be plucked._  
  
_He let them be as they blossomed._  
  
_But the orange hues of the days did not last, instead the snow started falling from the skies, sometimes they would make the baby blue cherry blossoms seem dull. Withered. There were fireflies, too, like faint stars and streetlights, where the trees would reach up to swat them away with their branches. They would grumble to the king about the small, buzzing lights. The king would be too caught up in his misery to listen; the trees looked on in worry._  
  
_The tall man tripped over himself, lips pursed and eyes watering slightly, on the two-hundred-and-sixth day, everything seemingly a little less perfect that usual. His robes seemed heavy against his shoulders as the sun yawns while the stark white moon sings its lullaby to the magical land. The Luminans – the land’s people – would stare with their freckled noses wrinkled cutely in confusion, with their coloured eyes widened and their pinched ears twitching at every rumour that escaped the palace. It is then when the king notices._  
  
_“He has left, my king.”_  
  
_He has left you._  
  
_The king was left heartbroken._  
  
_The sun no longer visited and the elders grew weary, refusing to admit to their worries. The pink blossoms no longer bloomed between bright red hair. The moon does not sing either, only weeping about her lover – the sun – and they had all known by then. The king also knew but the fates had not planned it for another thousand and four years. The burning of the books should have been enough._  
  
_It was not, and a human had stepped through a lost, tattered book._  
  
_The pathways were still covered in baby blue cherry blossoms, scattered pebbles instead of stones coloured a midnight blue just like the moon’s sky, but the land’s people only grew anxious when their king turned flustered but furious once again._  
  
_The king was falling in love-_  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“Baekhyun!”  
  
Black hair a mess and clothes dirtied by dry paint, droopy eyes roam from one bookcase to another as they sting under the dim light peeping in through the gaps of wooden shelves. It’s closing time. The voice rings, causing Baekhyun to fall back into a bookshelf with a yelp, a whine bubbling past his lips when he traps his thumb between the pages in his haste to close the slightly torn book. It’s heavy as he holds it to his chest, eyes anxious because he had snuck in without so much as a hiccup.  
  
“Baek! I need to close up the bookstore so we can head home!”  
  
He grunts in response at Luhan’s shrill call, and it’s not hard to imagine the older scowling while scurrying between the fantasy sections in search for a dreary looking Baekhyun. The younger boy – young enough as a freshly graduated college student who holds only an art and design degree to his name – keeps the tattered book close, making him grow nauseous. A sign that he had been in the bookstore for far too long after he closed down his art studio for the day. But the boy only brings a thumb up to his lips so he could suckle away at the bruising skin, leaving cracks of paint lingering near his mouth.  
  
“Where did he go-- what are you doing here?!”  
  
Baekhyun squeals in surprise when Luhan lunges forwards and rips the book out of his hands. The pages don’t give away and neither do they tear under his aggressive pull, not even in the slightest, but it’s back up against a chest, tucked away from the younger’s prying hands. Baekhyun moves forward but his hands grow slack by his sides when the bookstore keeper vehemently shakes his head with doe eyes alarmed but narrowed in a silent warning.  
  
“How far did you get with this?” Luhan asks, scolding but not accusatory, and Baekhyun stares baffled at his best friend, “this- this isn’t meant- you aren’t meant to be here, Baek. This is staff only entry. The fantasy section has been replaced by the criminology texts and moved to the other side of the store; I told you just this morning.”  
  
“It’s just a book, Lu,” Baekhyun mumbles as his nose wrinkles at the dried paint wafting up into the somewhat stuffy air of the bookstore, fingers rubbing at the red skin of his thumb before he reaches forward for the fairy tale again.  
  
“It’s not just a—will you stop! You’re not allowed to read this.”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“You’re just not allowed to—”  
  
“Look, someone’s going through the cash register!”  
  
And the book is back in Baekhyun’s hands.  
  
“Give that back!”  
  
With one hand pressed up against Luhan’s agonised looking face, curses muffled into his other hand that is dry from all the clay he had used today, Baekhyun places the book down on one of the shelves to flick through the pages till he reaches the chapter he was on. He was almost finished. And it's the only thing on his mind, and so he doesn’t notice each page turning a pale gold, little sparks leaving the ripped corners. Instead he focuses on the numbers at the bottom, tongue poking out and his eyes narrowed in concentration to recollect the chapters he read. The sparks sting against the younger’s skin but he pays no heed, turning the pages faster when Luhan yells at him to stop.  
  
Soon, the letters start shining with cherry blossoms falling into piles by Baekhyun’s feet.  
  
Luhan starts panicking, “Baekhyun, I swear to-”  
  
“Come on, Lu. Fairy tales never hurt anyone.”  
  
But they do, starting with sparks that scald and leave red blotches on unblemished skin. They sting, although the cherry blossoms are soft, pink, some white, and they fly into Baekhyun’s palms but the book also falls apart with every little shot of light that seems to burst through every ruined page. Amongst the sight, Baekhyun sends Luhan a look of despair while his friend looks all sorts of alarmed, eyes pricked with fear before the dry paint on his right cheek makes him sneeze.  
  
And the blinding light consumes them.

 

 

~*~

 

 

Muffled whispers and little buzzing sounds.  
  
A courtyard with hedges as a maze stands, coupled with carved fountains with upturned mouths that sing lullabies beside the scale-tailed people swimming in the foam ponds surrounding the outskirts of the high walls. Lamp posts like city streetlights lined up on either side of the cobbled pathways, where the Pixians – little creatures the size of bulbs – wobble in their places as they walk along the edges on their tiptoes. Flowers soften under melted snow but they begin to slowly bloom as the roses urge everyone to quieten down. It isn’t long before they fall into a slumber, much like the palace that stands tall. Soft lights trickle out through the wall to ceiling windows, encased in black frames and adorned with ivory. Yet, they can hear the hushed talks through the walls, a twinkling of celebration over the angry voice and splintering sparks that come from within the king’s home.  
  
“He just fell! He came out of nowhere and just—just landed here!”  
  
Baekhyun’s eyes are still closed as he winces at the voices that surround him, lips twitching into a grimace when they become louder while his nose crinkles at the smell of pollen. Lots of it. He feels the flowers under his closed hands, grass like soft bedding that escape through the gaps between his fingers, and if he were to open his eyes, he would see the little fluorescent buds on the tip of every petal to accompany the moon’s light.  
  
He only opens them after a while, eyes landing on stars that twinkle like they do on normal days, just a little brighter against the midnight sky. Then, without a doubt, they start moving. They run across the sky, some shaking in their spots, chasing each other like children playing tag as one shines brighter than the other before they turn dull again and scurry back into their place. Baekhyun blinks once again, like he did at the bookstore.  
  
The bookstore!  
  
But there aren’t a pile of books stacked upon trolleys ready to be sorted through. There aren’t unhinged shelves either, ones that Luhan always says he’ll get around to fixing.  
  
As Baekhyun picks himself up, he notices that the cherry blossoms that fell at his feet minutes ago, hours, days - he doesn’t know - have formed a neat circle around him. They are coloured pale blue instead, not the soft pink that he is used to. So with one glance to the shy stars that look down on the land, Baekhyun turns to the trees that arch over him with their flailing branches and frail leaves.  
  
“Hello there.”  
  
Baekhyun screams loudly into the night as the trees blink back at him before he’s heaving against his palms. The trees watch while the man starts mumbling to himself, eyes unblinking and old like the bark of their trunks, and the sight soon turns into Baekhyun bringing his hands up to slap his cheeks. This must be some sort of weird dream that he has to desperately wake up from. Yet the trees are still standing, the taller one with its branches crossed over the heart of its trunk while the other discreetly reaches out to poke the fumbling boy on the shoulder.  
  
“Humans. What do you expect?”  
  
The gruff voice earns a finger pointed towards them as Baekhyun panics, realising after a few lost seconds that he must look so stupid right now.  
  
“Luhan must have hit me over the head with a book. There’s no other explanation other than this being a dream, nothing else.” Baekhyun grumbles, giving them his back as he talks to himself, “there aren’t trees looking at me right now. I mean, there aren’t any talking trees I’m looking at right now. Not with eyes, especially ones that don’t have eyes. They don’t—will you stop touching my hair, please!”  
  
“I was only trying to comfort you.”  
  
“He does not need comforting, you fool. He is human.”  
  
“What is that supposed to mean?”  
  
Baekhyun stares, mouth agape and eyes wide with doubt, while the two trees quarrel back and forth.  
  
He shakes himself out of reverie when he catches the sight of someone running towards him through the mess of his mind. A head full of bright blonde hair, and that weird way Luhan runs because of the gym classes he had skipped in high school where he would chortle at his classmates from the side. Baekhyun almost cries in relief when he recognises his best friend.  
  
Only for the younger boy to trip up over his feet when he dodges to the side, sending the older boy into the trees. The annoyed look drops off Luhan’s face just as quickly when he finds Baekhyun staring at him with all the colour drained from his face. His hands are cupping his cheeks in fright while his eyes are hesitant as they look over Luhan’s shoulders, and his mouth is slightly parted to let out another deafening scream.  
  
“Luhan, this is a dream. You must be part of my dream, too, because there is no way there are wings sprouting from your back, and your nose is round. Not just round, but like a button. And your ears—when did you ears get so pointy,” Baekhyun asks quietly, hand against his forehead as he paces around. He stares at the trees, steals glimpses of the stars before he’s squeezing his eyes shut and tries to reason with himself, “That’s not even a question. This is a dream after all, right?”  
  
Luhan stands there, button nose a light shade of red with freckles scattered across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. They weren’t there before. Neither were his wings that flutter slightly against his back, translucent but pink. It has Baekhyun rubbing at his burning eyes with clenched fists. But the older’s pointed ears don’t disappear, seemingly pinched at the tip, almost sewn together, and they twitch as the flowers start yawning in their sleep. The sky is orange behind them, yet half the land has gone too sleep and only the trees are there to witness a human hyperventilating in the courtyard of the royal palace.  
  
Baekhyun throws the trees a wide eyed glance before he’s gesturing wildly towards the ground, the sky, even the flowers that stand still around Luhan.  
  
“They’re talking. They’re all talking. The trees—they were conversing like—like we do, like people do. That’s not normal. The stars, too! They were chasing each other; before you ask, they weren’t shooting stars, Lu. The tree said hello. Trees don’t say hello! Next thing you know, those fountains are also going to start talking!”  
  
“I told you not to read the book.”  
  
Baekhyun looks at Luhan with his hand pressed against his flushed face and his lips twisted in confusion, tone unbelieving, “you’re telling me that all of this is real, that somehow we ended up here in… in wherever we are! All because of a book?”  
  
“You are here in our king’s land, Ignisilandia. The land of spring and fire embers, where the moon and the sun are lovers, the stars their children. There is no Earth in this universe; Earth is another dimension,” Luhan pauses with a purse of his lips, watching his friend grow weary as he falls onto the grass, his eyes focused on his shaking fingers because that’s the only thing that seems to make sense other than the beating of his heart loud in his ears, “we… we do not allow humans here. There has not been one in over a thousand years. The king, he had not—Baekhyun, you are not supposed to be here. Your name is not written in the stars—”  
  
“Can you stop talking like that,” Baekhyun cuts in, but his voice remains quiet as he faces the ground with his eyes shut tight, like the fallen blossoms would disappear and the trees will stop murmuring if he does, “it’s not funny.”  
  
“What?”  
  
The younger finally looks up, lips set into a thin line, “pinch me.”  
  
“Baekhyun, I cannot-”  
  
“Uppercut me if you have to. Throw me into that pond right there, or at least help me climb up this tree so I can jump off and just wake up! I want to wake up!” The boy snaps, hands hitting against the grass as the flowers start screaming silently in protest, but he doesn’t realise because there are tears of frustration pooling at the corner of his eyes – it all seems too surreal, yet it’s not.  
  
Baekhyun stays quiet after as he shuffles away when Luhan crouches before him to take his hands in his, and the younger allows him to, sniffing. He still doesn’t look up from the ground. But he realises that it’s not all a dream, and that he has fallen into another world like all the fairy tales he has read. With the tattered book nowhere in sight, Baekhyun refuses to understand the look of pity and panic in Luhan’s eyes. He knows home is far from here, even if there isn’t much to return to. Not even a family. Instead, Baekhyun strokes at one of the flowers that whimpers under his heavy touch but cuddles up to the side of his thigh with its petals hugging the boy.  
  
“We will try—” Luhan stops when Baekhyun narrows his eyes at him.  
  
“We’ll try, okay, Baek? We’ll try to find home again,” the doe eyed boy holds onto his hand tightly, hurriedly throwing a glance towards the buzzing sound of the palace where the king’s temper almost awakens the flowers and the mermaids in the foam ponds, and the Luminans and the Pixians, “but humans… humans aren’t welcome here. It’s forbidden for any of your kind to step through into this world, not when the king… he… just—they should never find out about you being human. The trees and the flowers do not care much for it and the moon loves everyone, but the king would do unimaginable things if he were to ever find out.”  
  
Luhan stares, trying to gauge a reaction from Baekhyun who sits too quietly, turning back to usher the two trees to stop fighting when the younger boy casts a weary look towards them.  
  
“I’m going to die, Lu.”  
  
Baekhyun winces as Luhan flicks him across the forehead, expression solemn while he huffs quietly into the sleeves of his simple blue robes.  
  
“I have been gifted by the elders to travel between Ignisilandia and Earth, a few of us without the king knowing, and it involves me alternating between my human form and my luminan form.”  
  
The trees listen on and Baekhyun bites his bottom lip, eyes unfocused but curious.  
  
“I—I could give you a temporary luminan form. It will give you the freckles – they are constellations like the stars so we’re one with the moon. The ears and wings also.” Luhan states, finger tapping away at his bottom lip as he takes in Baekhyun’s human form carefully, “I know this may seem stupid and fairly cliché but I remember Yifan saying something about the spell breaking once you confess to someone. Something about your human feelings being the truest form of love. So you must not fall in love with anyone, okay—”  
  
“What do you take me for—”  
  
“—you must not let another luminan know you are human either, and the skies forbid the king and the royal court from ever finding out. In fact, just avoid the royal family altogether. They shouldn’t know of your face, or your name. Your existence is temporary in Ignisilandia until we find the book again. Who knows where it has landed?”  
  
Silence.  
  
“I’ll have Yoda ears.”  
  
“Baekhyun.”  
  
“I’m just teasing, Lu.” With a laugh, one that bubbles past his slightly trembling lips, Baekhyun softly flicks at the whining flower that presses the leaves of its stems against him. He soon smiles up at a hesitant Luhan, quietly laughing along with the trees.  
  
The younger simply nods when the luminan asks for his hand again, hesitant at first, before there’s a thumb pressing into the middle of his palm. Before Baekhyun could throw another question at Luhan, he feels the burning of non-existent sparks again but without the softness of the pink blossoms to accompany them.  
  
A light tickles his skin that’s covered with dried blue paint, illuminating the lines of fate on his hands until Baekhyun starts to pull away because it’s prickling at his skin. Like dots dancing across his flesh, Baekhyun’s hand is pulled back into Luhan’s, and the older luminan presses harder till the tips of the human’s ears are pinched. The sounds of the mermaids singing under the surface of the pond sound closer than they did before. His skin is pricked, too, over his rounded cheeks and over the expanse of his button nose. Droopy eyes turn grey, with little, pale flecks of brown in place. But it’s when Baekhyun’s spine begins to ache that the temporary wings make themselves known as they sprout from his shoulder blades, growing through his sweater.  
  
They stand tall – the wings – a shade of translucent grey with faint linings of glitter against the darker lines. They stand taller than any other Luminans, Luhan notices, staring up in awe before they flutter softly against the moonlight.  
  
And Baekhyun screams once again.  
  
“Holy balls, this feels like something out of Sailor Moon!”  
  
“Not even close, Baekhyun.”

 

 

~*~

 

 

“Nope, I’m definitely lost.”

  
_‘I’ll be in the royal hall with the elders; I’ll be done in three hours top. Until then, just… just don’t get yourself into trouble, stay with the trees, visit the store or monuments, but don’t talk more than you have to with any Luminan you might come across.’_  
  
But with every stumble across the cobbled stone pathways in the night, against quaint little shops and beautiful fields that stretch off into another world, with every baby blue cherry blossom Baekhyun had looked at speculatively, Luhan’s words fall into whispers.  
  
The tips of the smaller’s wings are slack and they brush against the ground while he mumbles to himself, shaking his head once he reaches a closed store where he decides to walk down another lane. The statues wave at him with marbled smiles and he merely smiles back before picking up his purple robes and scurrying away. Baekhyun is wheezing by the time he rounds the corner of the garden hedge, one amongst many that make up a maze behind the courtyard. He’s too busy trying to calm himself down when a Pixian runs into his ankles and utters a quick apology, but turns to throw the boy a cursory look as to why a Luminan would be awake during the royal ceremony.  
  
He stares stumped after the little creature, only for a while before he’s trailing down another pathway.  
  
Baekhyun has always been a little too curious, mixing purples and greens even though he knows they don’t compliment each other, using running paint that tears through his canvases, or anything that becomes a muse. So he thinks nothing of it when he comes across double oak doors that stand in the middle of Ignisilandia. They’re large enough to take fifteen Luminans just to push it open, slight carvings made in the wood that can barely be seen under the dim light that escaped through the tall windows.  
  
The warnings are faint in his head, going unheard as he softly pushes against the doors. Baekhyun stands unaware that he has roamed into the royal courtyard again with hurried footsteps after his encounter with a Pixian, and onto the foot of the palace. Onto the doorstep of the king’s home.  
  
Gold lights flood the halls, one that seemingly goes on for acres, and Baekhyun stumbles across it, his mouth ajar in astonishment and his grey eyes large behind his hair. His robes slide against the floor behind him as he slowly walks further into the palace. Made out of marble and stone, the cherry blossoms are white against the reds and the golds, other flowers coloured softly but stark against the gold vines that hand from the ceiling. Red carpet rolls against the polished floor and onto two sets of staircases that are gold with all sorts of flowers woven between the railing, and there’s a stream of water running along the edges before they pool into ponds at the base of the stairs. But even with the tall windows standing against every wall, silk curtains either tied together or loosened, the palace seems void of… people.  
  
The empty hall is soon filled with Baekhyun suddenly snickering into his hands, “Cinderella’s palace has nothing on this—”  
  
“Who let you in?”  
  
The snickers are cut short and Baekhyun feels his heart thud dangerously against his chest when he turns to see men clad in armour, each one pointing a spear towards him. He suddenly looks smaller standing before the palace windows, almost dwarfed in his borrowed robes and very much like a child with faint spots of pink paint on his cheeks and droopy eyes that can barely see through his dishevelled hair.  
  
Baekhyun doesn’t understand why he does it, doesn’t know why he hastily slips on the hood of his robes to cover his face before he’s running in the opposite direction, eyes never wavering as the guards chase after him. The clanking of armour and swords are loud behind him, but his heart pounds wildly against his chest and he’s not sure what to focus on. The tall windows pass by him and his shoes almost slip on the polished floors, but Baekhyun runs to wherever – he doesn’t know – anywhere where he could lose the guards chasing him.  
  
With muddled thoughts, heartbeat erratic and unrelenting, simple robes that feel too heavy for his exhausted body, Baekhyun pushes against another set of doors that stand just as grand as the entrance to the palace. He trips through the door as juice flutes tinker together in celebration, drowning out the low, aggravated voice that is soon hushed by the former queen. The boy doesn’t feel the marbled ground beneath his palms or his face, or the guards that halt to a stop behind him.  
  
It’s cliché.  
  
Baekhyun groans when he falls because instead of meeting the floor, his face is pressed up against a hard torso, against the deep rumble of someone’s voice who curses in surprise. Even the slur of obscene words has him shuddering in his spot. Because he’s fallen into the arms of a tall man, one many have sought out as their prince charming, even though he holds the title of King of Ignisilandia.  
  
A fiery man with more burning sparks in his hair than baby’s breath, cherry blossoms no longer a common sight, with many still falling at his feet. And Baekhyun did just that – quite literally.  
  
A sharp intake of breath, flustered and breathless, Baekhyun finally looks up to see almond shaped eyes boring into him, golden, molten, just like the bangles that cling around the biceps of the shirtless man. His own eyes flutter at the sight of light trailing every line of the tall man’s torso, over his shoulders and onto his neck. The same pointed ears as his people but hair red as fresh roses with embers sparking like firecrackers. The sparks land on the bare skin of Baekhyun’s arms where the sleeves of his robes have fallen and bunched around his elbows.  
  
“Ouch!”  
  
The fire embers prickle just like the king’s anger.  
  
“Why have I not seen your face before?”  
  
The man asks, the deep timbre of his voice thundering across the hall, with lips that are plump but pursed, a gentle but stern mix of words. Baekhyun still winces under the gruffness of it, legs quivering as the king towers over him.  
  
“B-Byun Baekhyun. I am Byun Baekhyun,” the human almost smacks his hand against his face, wondering why he didn’t give out a false name, especially to the man who rules the land – Baekhyun is sure of it – but the thought falls away when the taller grows impatient, “a friend of Luhan’s. N-No family.”  
  
“Is that so?”  
  
_Luhan? That crazy luminan Sehun is trying to court. Only the skies will know why his brother has not given up yet._  
  
Baekhyun doesn’t get to answer before the sparks in the king’s hair start to run in swirls above his head, accompanied with a voice that is demanding as Chanyeol goes to pull away from him, “come back here right now, Chanyeol! You will listen to your mother!”  
  
And it takes longer it should have for Baekhyun to noticed the dents his fingers are creating across the king’s biceps from where he’s been hanging on tightly ever since he fell. But it’s the least of his concerns when he feels the calloused and somewhat nimble fingers digging without care into the soft skin of his ass, forming similar dents just like the ones on the taller’s arms but also barely there under his robes. With a warm palm pressed against his flesh, Baekhyun’s eyes quickly drop in embarrassment, and the younger gulps as he eyes the man’s Adam’s apple that bobs under his stare when Chanyeol’s lips twitch into a scowl. And then the king squeezes. Hard.  
  
“What are you doing—”  
  
“Him! It is him. He will be the one!” the same demanding voice cheers, albeit in a gentler tone that before, soft spoken but loud enough to show enthusiasm and something akin to relief.  
  
Chanyeol lets go, and Baekhyun loses his sense of balance when he almost slips on the hem of his robes as he bows to the king. It’s what everyone does in the fairy tales. But Baekhyun is standing back up again to see a different pair of almond eyes peering at him softly, wrinkles at the edges from age but also from the many smiles she had smiled during her ruling of Ignisilandia. He squeezes his eyes shut, having seen the glistening crown on top of the queen’s head – the former queen, he assumes in panic – in her velvet robes with a train longer than most but shorter than the king’s, her eldest son – Park Chanyeol.  
  
Performers halt but cups of fire still blaze against the walls in between the tall windows, and Baekhyun finds himself in the arms of the woman.  
  
The boy’s startled yelp is cut short when the former queen’s fingertips touch his arm, leaving behind dandelions that fall apart and a trail of gold lining the skin of his wrists. They glow just like the lines on the King’s toned chest, burning more against his human skin before they’re turning into a slight hue of pink.  
  
“Wait, wait, what are you doing—”  
  
The king’s mother doesn’t listen as she lowers the hood of Baekhyun’s robes while his own hands scramble for hers, head shaking furiously in refusal. It still falls, and his eyes land on the king, who stares at him with his lips parted and his expression of confused irritation falls along with it. The king’s eyes stay fixed on the smaller as the flames behind him grow a light red, pots of flowers being thrown into the fire while a low hum fills Baekhyun’s senses. He’s lost, the painter thinks, because the gold markings start moving, painting themselves across Chanyeol’s neck, across the sweat that’s glistening against his skin, and towards his sharp jaw and onto his cheeks that are coloured pink.  
  
I’m insane, Baekhyun adds, glancing down at his own hands in surprise where the marks grow bolder without the former queen’s touch, before his head is snapping up to face the king again – a king who only seethes at the sight.  
  
“He is beautiful, is he not, Chanyeol?”  
  
The king looks away.  
  
It’s when the Florenstines – with dots of yellow on the apples of their cheeks, dressed in fallen palm leaves – grab onto his hands in excitement and usher him towards the pit of fire that holds purple embers. They don’t get very far and they stare confused down at the smaller boy as Baekhyun shakes his head, reluctant to follow. He does it without a thought when he grabs onto the nearest thing, or someone, and lets out an ear splitting scream. Hair more dishevelled than it already was, grey eyes almost blurred with tears because he’s just so confused, Baekhyun somewhat blubbers up at the Florenstines looking down at him.  
  
“I’m going to die. I’m going to die. I’m—” the human abruptly stops, hands falling to his sides immediately when he catches Chanyeol’s scowl over their shoulders.  
  
“I will certainly make sure to be the death of you.”  
  
So with a pull of his hands, Baekhyun is led towards the fire again, never mind his protests when the flames burn up into his eyes and sends him scurrying backwards. The Florenstines pull at his hair gently, handmade flowers being weaved in through his dark strands delicately, unlike the King’s where the flowers grow from his skin and the embers fly off like fireworks from every tip of his red hair. The younger’s skin is pulled, from his cheeks to his collarbones, and he almost cries when they stroke over the golden markings that delve deeper into his flesh.  
  
Then they pull at his robes, leaving him in nothing but the white slacks Luhan had given him. It earns him amused gasps from the Florenstines when he shies away, and it has Chanyeol turning around with his eyes closed as he pinches the bridge of his nose.  
  
There’s the sound of someone laughing, followed by another that is boisterous as the first, and Chanyeol glares off at his brothers, the two having stopped sprinkling the fire into the glass cases that line the walls just to hoot at him. Their arms flail everywhere until Sehun almost falls over the bannister of the hall’s balcony that surrounds the cushioned, velvet seats, and Jongin stops laughing to pull their youngest brother to safety.  
  
The young princes. With one controlling the weather, allowing the flowers to sing every day under the sunlight and for them to be watered under the rain where they can grow, Sehun stands as the youngest prince of Ignisilandia. Jongin, the second child of the former queen, teleports to the different lands outside of their kingdom, gathering the best sources and forming convenient relationships for their land’s people.  
  
They were both told to watch their older brother in silence. So it’s only with a look from their mother that has them settling down, no longer guffawing around but still discreetly teasing Chanyeol until the king’s fire embers burn at their skin. The fire is something the younger brothers cannot master, only black starlets growing against blonde hair and white daisies in black.  
  
“Get down here now, you fools!” Chanyeol doesn’t yell but his voice is loud enough to scare the Florenstines as they run along.  
  
“Fools? We are hurt, big brother.”  
  
The bickering stops when the queen clears her throat.  
  
Chanyeol has yet to turn around.  
  
While Baekhyun finds himself adorned by a white gown, having not realised when he had been looking back and forth between the king and his brothers. He isn’t given any time to start screaming again once he notices, with a few pats here and there as the gown flows down his skin ever so softly and he’s pushed further towards the fire. The king adorns the same gown but in black, left open for the lines on his chest to burn brighter than ever, coloured gold just like the crown they placed on his head.  
  
Baekhyun watches it all in fascination, completely enthralled by the sight as if Chanyeol had just stepped out of a fairy tale. He breaks out of his stupor when he's pulled towards the king, catching him again just like he did at the door because the younger stumbles in his steps again. Hands soon drop to the smaller’s waist and thumbs press through the thin fabric of the white gown and onto the slight curve of his hips.  
  
“Just be quiet and go with it. Or I swear to the moon, even my mother will not be able to stop me from throwing you to the mermaids where you will be lost under the sea for the centuries to come.” Chanyeol whispers in a harsh tone as his hand dips into the small of Baekhyun’s back, cheeks coloured red just like his hair that has the human boy blinking up at him, “this is for my mother. I will find a way out of this, and I will make sure of it. Do not think anything of it and spare me the trouble of having to fight with you tonight.”  
  
But the king’s scowl falls and he’s left staring down at the boy, puzzled, when Baekhyun scrunches up his nose at the taller’s words before he’s mumbling in a hurried voice, “Don’t talk to me in riddles, old man.”  
  
“What did you just call me—”  
  
“Nothing! Absolutely nothing!”  
  
A hum starts and the gold shimmers against their skin when Chanyeol is told to press his face against the crook of Baekhyun’s neck. He begrudgingly does so. And then the smaller feels the man’s lips parting, warm against him in which without a thought, Baekhyun reaches for the tall man’s shoulder so he can hold on as he gasps. But it’s drowned out by the chants of the elders standing by the fire, amongst the queen, who recites the words printed on a glass rose. The fire is the only thing that roars in Baekhyun’s ears. He can’t hear his own thoughts, let along the king’s or the land’s people who are looking at him as if they know. As if they know him. But they couldn’t possibly know. Soon, the gasps grow and Chanyeol groans, his torso burning in sync with the younger’s as the embers in his hair become furious and the flowers start wilting in the human’s hair.

  
The queen stops reciting.  
  
“Stop fighting the bond, Chanyeol. His flowers will die, and yours will refuse to grow.”  
  
Bond?  
  
“You will no longer be able to rule the land and everything you have learnt to give life to will start to perish.”  
  
Life.  
  
“You would not want that, my son. Would you?”  
  
The words are said sternly and are persistent, and Chanyeol has no choice but to listen with clenched fists, his lips still against Baekhyun before he’s tightening his arm around the smaller and leaving a kiss against the symbol of the flower that draws itself onto the side of the boy’s neck. The king kisses against the flower as it colours itself pink, into blue, only a faint lining left in pale silver. Head leant down and fingers creating new dents into Chanyeol’s shoulders, the flowers grow again in Baekhyun’s hair when he cries out. He wants to scratch at the heavy, burning feeling against his chest that soon starts to warm his heart. It’s warm and it clouds his senses because fantasy doesn’t work like this. Fantasy doesn’t involve him, a broken king and a bond that he suddenly wants to take a hold of.  
  
The cheers are deafening as the Florenstines cry in glee, each and every one rushing out to tell the town’s people, orders of banquets flying along, too, and the moon joins in on the celebration.  
  
“Our king has married, and we will welcome Park-Byun Baekhyun as out lunar king, who will rule beside him just like the stories have told.”  
  
Park-Byun Baekhyun?  
  
Married?  
  
“We’re married?!” the shriek startles everyone but they laugh it off and go on the merry ways to tell their families of the news that had been awaited for centuries, and in the midst of it all, Baekhyun starts waving his arms at nothing in particular, the dialect of his tone earning a few curious glances, “I am married! To the king-- no, no, I’m dreaming. I’m most definitely dreaming, and Luhan will wake me up. I’m probably falling off the couch right now, ready to wake up and I won’t be here.”  
  
“What nonsense are you talking—”  
  
“I just wanted to take a stroll around the city, not marry this- this unnecessarily tall, grouchy looking giant—can you stop looking at me as if you’re going to kill me!”  
  
Baekhyun pants, chest heaving up and down as he glares back at Chanyeol, the king having ripped his gown after throwing his crown towards Junmyeon, his royal tutor, who catches it with a relieved sigh. The tall man stands again in just black slacks, a sight Baekhyun only blinks at before he’s marching up to the king in hurried steps.  
  
The Florenstines that have been left behind chase after the human as he runs off with his flower crown still resting on his head, slightly tilted and wilting under his anger, a reflection off the embers that grow stronger in their king’s hair. Chanyeol look of anger starts to dim, however, sharp but soft features taking on an expression that is not in the least bit amused with the small stranger’s antics in front of the elders. It continues to flare when Baekhyun stops right in front of him, till the tips of their noses are touching and his eyes are flickering up to the sparks in Chanyeol’s hair that miss his skin by inches.  
  
“Why didn’t you tell me?!” no one has ever dared to look the king in the eyes, only his mother, the moon and the elders, but Baekhyun does, almost bashfully with his tongue in his cheek to bite back a few words yet he’s anything but bashful when he’s barely keeping himself calm, “how was I supposed to know that is a marriage ritual. You kissed my neck like some werewolf out of twilight, and now I’m fated to you till death do us apart. And—stop glaring at me. Your left eye is twitching. But yes—what will I tell Luhan?! Why couldn’t you just let me fall on my face when I fell through those doors instead of playing prince charming?”  
  
Chanyeol simply clicks his tongue, “are you finished?”  
  
“No. In fact, I have a lot more to say—”  
  
“You should not be talking to me in such a manner.”  
  
Baekhyun slaps a hand against the man’s chest, over the markings and against Chanyeol’s furiously beating heart, the scream dying in his throat because he can’t believe he just hit the king, “I will talk you h-however I want,” and with a pause where his lips suddenly stretch up into a rectangle smile and crescent eyes shine, the human boy adds on, “my dear husband.”

Then he’s picking up his discarded robes and running out of the ballroom.  
  
“The fates have me bonded to a brat!”

 

 

~*~

 

 

“You did what?!”

  
In a room that’s barely lit but small enough for a single Luminan, in between the quaint, little stores, Baekhyun paces back and forth as he hurriedly slips into human clothes that Luhan had stored away for his trips to Earth. The younger runs a trembling hand through his hair before he’s stretching the skin of his cheeks, looking all kinds of panicked and terrified. He glances at the older with his eyes glassed over. Even the little, floating bulbs, like manmade fireflies, lighting up the room and dancing around a bewildered Luhan seems to make Baekhyun feel uneasy and lost. Just so lost.  
  
“I…I… I was walking down the lane one second and then I saw doors the next. I didn’t know, Luhan! I didn’t know. And these men—men bigger than any human I have ever seen before, almost the size of those huge doors, started chasing me! I fell right into whatever ceremony they were holding. I didn’t mean to.”  
  
“Baekhyun—”  
  
“I just went along with everything like you said; I thought I’d be thrown to the dungeons or something if I disobeyed. How was I supposed to know that it was a marriage ritual out of all things? There were no I do’s, nothing. I didn’t even walk down the aisle… and neither did he,” he chokes on a hiccup, “he doesn’t like me, Luhan! What am I going to do?! And to think I was painting in my studio just this morning and now I’m here married to the mad king of whatever this universe is!”  
  
“Ignisilandia.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Well, you can’t stay here, Baek,” Luhan ponders worriedly, sending the little light bulbs away with a wave of his hand, where they run to the younger human instead as they crowd around the loose petals stuck in his hair, “they’d expect the new lunar king to live with King Chanyeol and his family now. You’re royalty and all.”  
  
It finally sinks in.  
  
“You’re royalty now, Baekhyun! What have you done?! If the royal family finds out about you being human, they won’t send you back to Earth. They’ll… they’ll… who knows what our king will do to you! He’s not a forgiving person, Baek, nowhere near. He’s far from that. He gives life to flowers, that’s the only way the land’s people live and so does the moon, but we don’t know of the humans that suddenly disappeared centuries ago. The elders can only thank the stars that the king hasn’t encountered a human since… not yet at least.”  
  
“All of this just because of a book?!”  
  
“And until we find that book, you will live in the palace with the royal family, with king Chanyeol, but you should keep to yourself. Don’t speak when you’re not spoken to—”  
  
“Am I a kid—”  
  
“Don’t let the king know things about you more than he already does now, which isn’t much. We need to keep it like that while I find the book, okay? And just… try to understand the king. It may not make any sense to you right now but he is your husband. Remember that.”  
  
Baekhyun crawls up onto spare bed besides Luhan’s as he nods, sitting with his back against the wall to stare up the firelights, like he’s marvelling at them, like they’re the prettiest things he has ever seen in the confines of a dark room. But he smiles at nothing in particular, even though his heart is creating a havoc inside his chest, managing to whisper through it all, “anything else?”  
  
“Just don’t fall in love with him.”  
  
“Never.”

 

 

~*~

 

 

Fingers rake through red hair that is out of place for a well-kept king, and then moving lazily to pick at his loose white shirt, stripping himself until he stood bare under the moonlight streaming in through the dark, velvet room. His sun kissed skin glows under the light. Windows opened and wind rustling in as the town sleeps while the mermaids and fountains sing, Chanyeol strolls around his room with an ache in his bones. Fatigue. Eyes stinging just as his thoughts pound against his head, with the weight of his world on his shoulders, he wipes his hand against his mouth roughly to stop the onslaught of yelling that was expected to come after the palace slept with content thoughts.

  
Because the king is married.  
  
He’s married.  
  
“To a brat.”  
  
“Who are you calling a brat—whoa, whoa, why are you naked?!”  
  
Baekhyun stands by the doorway, looking ruffled with his hands clutching at the robes bundled up in his hands. His eyes fall from Chanyeol’s confused face, from his red pointed ears to eyes that are hooded under the moonlight, to his lips that are plump and swollen and down his torso that glistens with gold just like the bangles that are wrapped around his arms. The human only notices then that the king is as bare as the day he was born.  
  
“Holy anacondas.”  
  
“What did you just say?”  
  
His own hands slap against his closed eyes and Baekhyun turns around to face the doors he was told to go through after stumbling back into the palace during the middle of night, where the mermaids had stopped singing and started yawning. He bumped into many things on his way up the stairs until a servant found him crouching against the bannisters, mumbling to himself how this is all a dream. So with hazy eyes, droopy and glazed over, he listened as they led him to Chanyeol, his feet shuffling across the endless marbled hallways. They reached the king’s room after some time, centered in the heart of the palace – double doors similar to the entrance of the royal home closed.  
  
Baekhyun had walked into the dark room, expecting the king to be asleep but wishing he wouldn’t be in there. His tired eyes barely adjusted to the moonlight before he found toned muscles, sharp features with soft lips and eyes, and the tall intimidating man as he walked around. Baekhyun hadn’t expected Chanyeol to be bare.  
  
“What is it with you and walking into rooms uninvited?”  
  
“That isn’t my fault! I was told to come here.”  
  
Chanyeol grunts, slowly starting to rummage around for a pair of trousers he can slip into, baffled at himself as to why he didn’t just crawl into bed instead and ignore the boy. His fingers barely pluck the fabric as he eyes Baekhyun fidgeting against the door, whose loud, shallow breaths are filling the room. The king feels his lips twitch at the corner. But the smaller doesn’t notices and he becomes restless because Chanyeol seems to be taking far too long with just putting on a pair of pants.  
  
The human turns around with a huff.  
  
“Can you be any slower, old man—why are you still naked!?” Baekhyun screams, voice muffled once he turns around and hits his nose against the door, followed by whines under his breath.  
  
“Did I tell you to turn around?”  
  
“What, no—you can’t tell me what to do.”  
  
“Is that right?”  
  
“Yes—”  
  
And with one push – one neither had seen coming, even the king, and almost done on a whim – Baekhyun feels himself pressed into the door from the side of his reddening cheek to his hip. A shaky breath is emitted and he feels an arm slipping around his waist that brings his back against Chanyeol’s warm torso. The older man's skin seems to burn through Baekhyun's robes, with his hips resting slightly above the line of the smaller’s. He feels the gold bangles pressing into the curves of his hips from where the king has him encased in his arms. Yet, even with his eyes unfocused and refusing the meet the other’s, the king’s gaze is heady as he rests his chin on Baekhyun’s shoulder, the quirk of his lips and sparks of embers just as close as they were during the ceremony when he felt them against his collarbones.  
  
Chanyeol is still angry.  
  
The embers die out before they touch Baekhyun, and he tries turning around in his arms, mouth holding a few obscenities that soon die in his throat. The words fall and so do small, rose petals from Chanyeol’s hair and onto the creases of his robes. The younger stares somewhat amazed as the petals land against him and burst into smaller petals that are too tiny to hold – like bubbles that pop under any contact.  
  
It’s because the king is teasing.  
  
“If I tell you to rid of your clothing, would you not do it?”  
  
He’s teasing; the embers are replaced with small rose petals.  
  
Baekhyun blushes hard under Chanyeol’s smile, under plump lips that are brushing across his cheek. The king laughs and it seems airy and forced, but Baekhyun doesn’t know that. Instead, he smacks his hand back against the taller’s chest like he had done during the ceremony, although his breathing is laboured and he’s short of words.  
  
The human boy watches the smile fall from the man’s face, and it’s only when his glances up towards the king that he finds almond eyes fiery but no longer glinting like before, blank and calculating. They trail over his soft looking face, from his own pointed ears that don’t feel anything – they’re artificial, a spell – to the grey that covers his brown eyes and then to freckles that look as if they’re painted onto the surface of his cheeks, but Chanyeol stops at his markings as they glow.  
  
“We are married after all, bonded, until death do us apart like you had stupidly said even though death is not common here, whatever you may call it. So what would you do, Baekhyunee? Answer me.”  
  
The said boy simply huffs, “didn’t I tell you not to tell me what to do.”  
  
Baekhyun’s fingers find Chanyeol’s, quick to pry them off with a hiss when the markings burn too much, glow too bright, carving themselves into his skin under the taller’s hold. He looks at him with a steady expression, warning him with his eyes like no one has ever done before, and Chanyeol almost falls for it – almost. But the king stays quiet and his grip stays firm, before he’s holding the side of Baekhyun’s face with blunt, nimble fingers where his calloused fingertips brush the corner of the human’s mouth, against a smudge of pink paint that refuses to come off.  
  
Chanyeol’s voice is loud against the night, but hushed, “you talk far too much like them. If I did not know any better, or if I did not know that my land’s people pick up on their equally horrible habits, I could easily mistake you as one of them. Anyone would,” a thumb caresses the underside of Baekhyun’s eyes, “I have not seen a face quite like yours.  
  
_Who knows what the king would do if he were to find out that you’re human._  
  
“Never would I have ever wanted to marry someone like you. So do not worry. I will not ask of you to bed me,” Chanyeol says, tone harsh but steady, words colouring Baekhyun’s cheeks, “we are wedded only by name. You are the lunar king only by name. I may not bring others to my bed. I, as king, do not have such low morals in marriage, no matter how despicable this one may seem to be. I expect you to do the same. If you have a lover, end it. You are the king’s husband; you are the land’s lunar king. If you fail to meet fate’s standards, or if you fail to impress the moon, no one will know of a Byun Baekhyun.”  
  
Chanyeol lets him go, turns around and walks towards his bed adorned with the finest of silks made into blankets – fit for a king they say – and slips in like nothing had happened. Like he hasn’t left a trembling Baekhyun by the doors, who turns around to stare after him. He stays with his back pressed against the door as if they could help him escape, from the palace, from Ignisilandia, because he needs to go home.  
  
He wants to go home.  
  
But Baekhyun walks over to the king’s bed, staring silently at the man who sleeps under the moonlight, whose hair is no longer filled with rose petals – nothing at all, emotions dwindling as he sleeps.  
  
A king right out of a fairy tale, the human thinks with an ache in his chest, but this fairy tale doesn’t seem so familiar, and Baekhyun is lost. He’s lost as he kneels down beside the bed, in a room that is far from home and lays done onto the soft rug. His robes are bunched up in his hands and he holds them closely to his chest.  
  
Baekhyun falls asleep lost for the first time in a while, just as lost as the night he lost his parents under a fire ten years ago, and for the second time it happens, he’s not home.

 

 

~*~

 

 

 

Days turn into weeks in Ignisilandia, and the book is nowhere to be found.  
  
But breakfast for the royal family turns sour as Chanyeol insists it’s not just him who feels irritated with Baekhyun’s presence. The smaller is told to sit beside the king, near the head of the table while the family sit further down. He had hurried after the king as he has for the past twenty mornings after being scolded for waking up much later than the Luminans do, expected to be dressed in his robes once the moon has woken up from her slumber.  
  
On some days, he would oversleep despite Chanyeol nudging his hip with his foot, wanting this all to be a dream so he rolls over and grumbles at the king. He scurries out of his makeshift bed, out of his room and down the stairs once his husband leaves, unaware that he’s dressed in Chanyeol’s robes, where the velvet gown drowns him and the sleeves run past his hands. The queen laughs at the sight, quickly telling him to sit down before she’s turning her attention towards her oldest son with a knowing smile.  
  
The king turns a furious shade of red and narrows his eyes at a stuttering Baekhyun.  
  
The painter doesn’t sit straight, struggling against his heavy, royal robes as they weigh him down in his seat, neither does he use the right spoon for the soup that bubbles up in his mouth and turns to foam, in which Baekhyun stares at Chanyeol horrified while the tall man responds with a look of disbelief. His husband grows weary. But it isn’t until Chanyeol shoves a glass full of water – or what Baekhyun assumes to be water, with the way it turns a slight hue of purple the longer he stares – that the foams stop. Sehun chortles at the far end of the table. It also has chef Kyungsoo hiding his smile behind his palm as he wipes at the corner of Jongin’s mouth with a tissue.  
  
“He cannot even eat soup,” the youngest prince laughs into his napkin, ignoring the way Chanyeol’s look of irritation boils into little sparks, “mother has chosen an interesting one for our oldest brother.”  
  
Dessert comes around soon after, and it is expected when Baekhyun screams as soon as the plate is slid towards him. It looks back at him and the dessert copies his screams, a high pitched yell amongst the other plates shrieking in unison. It’s chocolate mousse of some kind that tries scurrying off his plate before the king’s mother ushers the chefs to bring back a tamer one. All the while, Baekhyun has brought his feet up onto the chair, sending Chanyeol a panicked look as he rocks back and forth with his legs against his chest.  
  
“I cannot put up with this!” The king yells.  
  
He wipes at his mouth with a hot napkin and pushes against the table with his palms, huffing as he excuses himself from the feasting hall. And Baekhyun is left there screaming in sync with a newly plated dessert.  
  
It’s only seven mornings later when something as simple as taking a bath has Chanyeol groaning into his fists, mindful of the wary look his mother sends him. His eyebrows furrow into a frown as Baekhyun’s cries can be heard around the palace. The maids stay in their place and the Florenstines stop tending to the pink hydrangeas growing at the corners of the palace hallways while Chanyeol stomps past them and over to his room. Some even shudder at the king’s anger, refusing to meet his eyes and others run towards the other end of the hallway. Only the queen can dissipate her son’s anger, but he pays no heed this time. And all of them hope that the skies won’t be too harsh on Baekhyun.  
  
“I can’t even take a bath without someone talking to me!”  
  
It’s not expected this time round when Chanyeol trips up on the wet floor of his bedroom as a towel clad Baekhyun runs out of the joint bathroom and into his chest. He wraps his wet arms around the disgruntled king, hair soaked and foam still clinging to his face. Translucent wings also dripping with water and wrapping themselves around Chanyeol out of instinct, Baekhyun wrestles against his husband, who tries pushing him off as he feels the cold water seeping into his white shirt. The smaller is bare under the towel, exposed skin soft under Chanyeol’s none-too-gentle touches, but the king struggles to ignore it.  
  
Baekhyun shakes his head, mumbling, “The bathroom has a soul, too. It started wiping me clean of all the bubbles, and then they—it started shampooing my hair! A-And then it started to talk – almost everything talks – and it was horrifying! Why is this happening to me?!”  
  
He cries, all the while moving his head against Chanyeol’s cheeks as he expresses his terrifying experience with wild arm gestures. Some bubbles end up in the king’s mouth and he starts spluttering at the taste of rose tinted water. He soon pushes Baekhyun away by a palm to the forehead but his fingers only end up tangled through wet hair when the smaller pushes further into him, into the crook of his neck, under his arms, anywhere, just as long as it’s away from the talking bathtub.  
  
“Save me, Chaneeyool.”  
  
The older man feels his eyes starting to twitch, again.

"First of all, it is Chanyeol. King Chanyeol,” he says, tugging Baekhyun away just as the latter realises that he’s in nothing but a towel and so he rushes towards the wardrobe the queen had filled with clothes accustomed to his size. Chanyeol turns around just like he had the first night, but his voice stays loud and clear, “second of all, why do you talk in such a manner?”  
  
Baekhyun stills in the midst of slipping into a loose, cream coloured shirt, similar to his husband’s, a contrast to his skin tight, black leathered trousers that he has put in on a haste. He fumbles with the buttons, stealing glimpses of Chanyeol’s back with pursed lips. Yet, he moves onto fiddling with his still wet hair, laughing to cover up his nervousness when the taller grows quiet, holding onto more words than he had spoken.  
  
“Like what, your highness?”  
  
And Chanyeol turns around, face void of confusion or suspicion, instead he looks at Baekhyun like he can’t believe his own muddled assumptions. It’s only when the king shakes his head, more at himself than the younger, when Baekhyun feels a little relieved. He sighs as Chanyeol goes back to looking at him in distaste, dismissing him with a click of his tongue before he’s strolling out of the room.  
  
“Just like a human.”  
  
The days dwindle on, and the Luminans, the Pixians and the Florenstines, even the mermaids and the trees, grow fond of their young lunar king. They bow to him, and Baekhyun quickly waves his hands around – they shouldn’t be doing that – and the land’s people look on as he follows after the royal family. The children sometimes knock into his knees, too lost in the growing crowd surrounding them, and the Luminans gasp in surprise as the former queen halts in her steps. But Baekhyun waves it away, hesitating before he runs his fingers through the little Luminan’s hair while holding her in his arms.  
  
The king looks back over his shoulder, noticing that the everyone else has stopped walking, only to look at the scene behind him with a speculative look. And there’s that sinking feeling at the pit of his stomach, but he shrugs it away when the queen opens her mouth to whisper her praises of his husband. He knows what she’ll say, and it’s been centuries since she last said it.  
  
_It is him._  
  
It’s not, Chanyeol reasons, as Baekhyun bids the land’s people farewell and hurries over to his side, closer than he had been before with a small smile in place. Like the smallest things make him happy. Chanyeol wonders why. And it’s when Baekhyun’s wings don’t flutter under his smiles, when they stay unmoving behind him while Chanyeol has his tucked away under his robes, the king stares up at them. The human notices and his smile disappears, wings starting to flutter under Chanyeol’s questioning eyes, and he skips ahead to escape the unnerving stare. But Baekhyun doesn’t get very far, walking right into a servant carrying a basket full of red apples, causing them to topple over.  
  
“Just like a human.”

 

 

~*~

 

 

“Did a filthy human raise you?”

  
Baekhyun stands up from his crouched position near a square patch of soil amongst a million others, scowling up at Chanyeol, who sits against the cobbled porch of the palace’s garden, next to Sehun and the former queen. They give him a tight lipped smile before they’re encouraging Baekhyun to continue with clasped hands. Jongin is probably in the palace’s kitchen, loitering around Kyungsoo, only to be noticed when he starts sulking into the dessert pantry.  
  
The smaller simply bows, and then he’s hiking up his trousers and rubbing at the soil with bare fingers to cover the seeds as they stand there unmoving, unlike the roses that start to whisper as they wait for the seedlings to grow.  
  
They stare concerned when there isn’t a glow in Baekhyun’s palm, his fingertips bare of any spell as he looks down at the seedlings, urging them to grow with his eyes because there isn’t any spell that can save him. The king also looks on after, his shoulders sagging the longer he watches his husband with bated breath. But nothing happens, and the seedlings don’t give their first cry. The roses turn around with slouched stems, and Baekhyun is left still crouching beside it. He’s staring at his hands but also staring at nothing in particular, wondering why Luhan hadn’t warned him off every Luminan, Pixian and Florenstine harbouring powers, even the youngest of children could put spells on flower buds. But Baekhyun knows he doesn’t hold any sort of magic – it wasn't possible.  
  
And so he lies through his teeth, “I-I lost my powers in an accident.”  
  
The human is too busy fighting against his nervous blush and the drop in his stomach to notice Chanyeol abruptly standing up from his seat, angry eyes drowning out the gasps around them, heavy as he stares at Baekhyun. The boy curses low under his breath and he shuffles away from the royal family, oblivious to his boots dirtied by the mud and the approaching king, and towards the maids as they wait for him with his robes held in their hands. Baekhyun doesn’t realise until he feels hands picking up the collar of his shirt.  
  
“What in hell do you mean you lost your powers in an accident?” Chanyeol seethes, ignoring his mother’s calls, and Sehun as he tells his brother to calm down, “nothing of that sort happens here. You are born with your powers; you die with your powers. You cannot lose them, no matter how hard you try to rid of them. Anyone living here in Ignisilandia would know. But you are not from here. Is that not right, my dear husband?”  
  
“Chanyeol, I—”  
  
“A single Luminan, Pixian or Florenstine of mine would not be foolish enough to lie to the royal court. No person of mine has been stolen of their powers. Because that is how the moon made us; that is how she makes Ignisilandia what it is. I would only fail her if one of my people have failed me, especially the man I have no choice but to call husband. So pray tell me, Baekhyun, why do you not know how to do a simple spell such as this one?”  
  
Chanyeol’s grip doesn’t loosen around the collar of the shirt, although the younger’s fingers hold onto his, although the king feels those fingers interlacing between his, coupled with shining eyes that are pleading him to let go so the burn of his blush can stop stinging his skin. The burn still glows under almond eyes, and Baekhyun feels tears prickling at his.  
  
How could he be stupid enough to think that he could get away with this?  
  
Chanyeol eyes are still hardened when he turns to his mother. His voice is low as he speaks, “this is what happens when you let my people frequent the miserable land that is Earth. They pick up on the habits of humans, forget how to create spells because they have grown so accustomed to their culture, forgetting the morals of my land. They become the disgusting creatures our fates have warned us of. Useless like them,” he accuses through gritted teeth, staring back down at Baekhyun as he harshly pulls him closer, “just like my husband has.”  
  
Useless.  
  
The queen keeps mute, escorted inside, and so is Sehun, who looks over at his older brother with a tight lipped smile. He follows after, along with the maids and the servants, scurrying to their place when Chanyeol sends them away with a wave of two fingers.  
  
They’re gone before Baekhyun pushes roughly at Chanyeol’s chest, leaving the king stumped because no one has yet to lay a finger on him, not even the enemies as they have died before they could reach the guards let alone the palace walls. And Chanyeol grows astounded, a humourless laugh bubbling up past his lips, head thrown back and the embers bursting into bigger sparks to fly off his hair. It all simmers, the embers, the laugh, and Chanyeol shoves Baekhyun back against an unmoving tree.  
  
“Do not dare. I am your king.” Chanyeol warns calmly and it should scare Baekhyun, and it does when he trembles under the king’s hold. The aggravation still crawls up his throat and out of his mouth.  
  
“I beg to differ.” Baekhyun retorts, moving past his husband before he’s pulled back into place.  
  
“Why do you have the manner of those—of those humans?”  
  
“And if I do, why does it concern you?”  
  
Chanyeol scoffs, “concern me? You are my husband; you are the king’s husband, and you roam the palace ground with your actions no different to those of humans. You cannot possibly be any worse, Baekhyun.”  
  
“They’re not that bad.”  
  
“Oh, you would know,” and Chanyeol is suddenly smiling. It’s tight and barely there but he leans down, sneering, and Baekhyun’s pushes himself back into the tree, “you are just like them, no better. Tell me, did you fall for an Earthling while you were there? Is that why you fell into their pathetic ways, because I cannot think of any other reason why.”  
  
“It’s not like that--”  
  
“Have you realised that I only tolerate you—”  
  
“Shut up! Just shut up!”  
  
The words ring in Baekhyun’s ears, buzzing and blurry as his eyes are unfocused on Chanyeol’s neck in front of him, close enough that if he tiptoed, the top of his head would hit the king’s chin. He focuses on the movement of the older’s Adam apple as he gulps, and Baekhyun refuses to look up when Chanyeol stares back down at him. His words crack just from the sheer ferocity of his husband’s, “w-why can’t you just shut up?”  
  
“I would rather marry a human if it means I don’t have to be married to someone like you,” Baekhyun says, voice quiet and breathy, but he finally looks up at Chanyeol, “s-some are terrible, maybe a majority. But there are good humans… in their world. Nothing like you; not at all like you. And I understand why it would be so difficult to fall for you because falling for any human sounds easy when there’s you. It’s me who was unfortunate to end up with a husband like you, one who looks at everything as if they’re lower than him.”  
  
The sparks in Chanyeol’s hair burn out until strand of his red hair turn into a deeper shade and the flower buds wilt slightly in place. He stays silent and backs away from Baekhyun, even as the boy’s eyes never once stray, but he leaves him standing there as the sun starts to say goodbye.  
  
“There’s not much I can do, Chanyeol.”

 

 

~*~

 

 

“Do you not have anything else you could do?”

  
Baekhyun scratches at the back of his neck before his fingers are slowly turning the next page of the book, one he had borrowed from the library in the corner of the palace. It’s about a moon, but Baekhyun isn’t reading. His eyes skim over the words, re-reading them three or four times as he steals glimpses of the man across from him. It’s only when his breathing seems too loud, heavy against his chest, that he slams the book on top of the oak table and turns to face Chanyeol. The king doesn’t bother hiding the fact that he’s been staring at Baekhyun the entire time.  
  
The taller had been in the feasting hall since morning, surrounded by glass cases of small spells created by Luminans and passed to the king so he could correct them before they’re finalised for the town’s people to use as a daily spell. Baekhyun had stumbled in and stared at the magic in fascination. Chanyeol was mistaken, assuming that his husband must have been amazed by the fresh spells only the creators and the royal family can see, with green smoke bubbling up from one spell and crystals spilling out from another. But Chanyeol started writing up the transcripts, ignoring the human’s existence, and so Baekhyun grew bored.  
  
“Is there something on my face?”  
  
Chanyeol parts his lips to reply.  
  
“Don’t answer that.”  
  
“You are reading just like they do,” Chanyeol muses from across the table, but Baekhyun sees the slight tick of his jaw and the twitch of his eye when he looks between the latter and the tattered novel, “Just like he did.”  
  
Baekhyun shuts it closed, murmuring, “How else do you suppose I read a book?”  
  
“Through your fingers against the spine, and the words will turn into moving images for you,” Chanyeol answers quietly, closing the glass cases to the keep the spells inside, “any luminan would know that, yet you read just like them.”  
  
“It’s interesting.”  
  
“It is pathetic.”  
  
“Do you mean yourself?”  
  
Baekhyun finds himself learning over the table, his knees on the chair in an impolite manner, but Chanyeol’s the only one in the room and he couldn’t care any less.  
  
The king leans back in his seat, chin resting in the palm of his hand and his bored look only irritates Baekhyun further, growing a little more irked when the taller man moves forward slightly to flick him across the forehead. It momentarily leaves Baekhyun in a daze, before he’s crawling across the table with a scowl.  
  
“Get down now.”  
  
The younger ignores it, and instead he waves his hand around as if to tell the man to stop talking.  
  
“I said get down—”  
  
The latch of the glass case opens under Baekhyun’s hand, and out falls green smoke onto the table like liquid as balls of clear balls escape and run around the feasting hall with quiet screams. Some spill onto Chanyeol’s robes that burn through the velvet, and with one quick movement of his hands, it is woven over with a new spell. But the king’s head still snaps up to glare up at Baekhyun.  
  
He should probably run, or apologise profusely. Yet instead, Baekhyun’s gaze drifts over towards the spilled spell and then to the screaming clear balls that bounce of the walls deliriously. And it happens in another blur when Chanyeol stands up too quickly, his palms against the table, and the rings on his fingers knocking into the oak. Baekhyun hurries back into his chair with a strangled yelp, further into the cushioned seat when his husband leans over the furniture, almost fuming.  
  
“Get out.” Chanyeol growls through clenched teeth, jaw set and eyes dark as he spoke.  
  
Baekhyun stares back flabbergasted but it dwindles down. He shakes away the heavy feeling in his stomach and plays with the tips of his fingers.  
  
“It was an accident.”  
  
“Get out right now!”

The king's yells startles the younger, who jumps in his seat and gulps at the sight of red embers flying off the taller’s hair like sparks. His cheeks are also painted with a tint of red as he grew further enraged by Baekhyun’s unapologetic tone.

"You are just like them! I had almost granted you the benefit of doubt, but I was mistaken! It is like I have married a human!”

The doors open in a hurry, the queen walking in with Junmyeon in tow, dressed in a blue gown that touches the clean floors, as they both look disapprovingly between the king and his husband.  
  
“What is going on here?”  
  
“It was a mistake, my queen—”  
  
“A mistake?” Chanyeol laughs lowly while his nerves pound against his head. He clears up the crystal balls and traps them back up in the glass cases with one sweep of his hands, before he turns to the former queen, “mother, he is nothing but a human. You have married me off to a man who might as well be one of them. Wings that do not flutter, fingers that cannot cast spells, and all because I let a handful of my people visit Earth under your wishes. But never have I ever met such a man as useless as them—”  
  
“I’m not useless,” Baekhyun argues, but his words crack at the end when the queen gives him a smile full of sympathy with eyes that turn sad at her son’s words, “even if you say I am, I’m not useless—”  
  
Chanyeol starts to taunt, “Then what are you? If you are anything but useless, what are you, Baekhyun? Because the skies will not answer for you, neither will the moon. Even the fates cannot explain why you are here. It is like you were destined to live in Earth, just like the rest of them.”  
  
“It’s because I—” Baekhyun’s words break off, shoulders slouching as they do and fingers reaching for his robes again when he hastily excuses himself.  
  
The human boy slides past the queen even though she reaches out to hold him, but Baekhyun just shakes his head. He blinks furiously to get rid of the awful stinging of his tears. He remembers home. He wants to go home. Yet he doesn’t find it when he ignores the queen’s call, or Chanyeol’s words, and pushes through the double doors to hurry back into the palace kitchen. He bumps into a confused looking Kyungsoo, but the smaller boy with wide eyes lets him go when the sob stuck in Baekhyun’s throat makes its way past his lips. Because he wants to go home. He doesn’t notice Jongin looking at him in anguish, or the weary look he sends Kyungsoo because he knows it’s all his older brother’s doing.  
  
Back in the feasting hall, there’s the king looking down at his hands as his hair loses the bright colour of red and turns maroon, almost black like the midnight sky that surrounds the moon when she is upset.  
  
“Son—” before the queen could scold her son, Chanyeol throws her a guilty after he had his palms pressed into his eyes to stop the pounding In his head, little pixels left in place when he finally pulled away to storm out of the room. He brushes past Sehun, who is writing his millionth letter to Luhan, and towards the kitchen after asking the maids if they have seen his husband. He bumps into a frowning Jongin and he looks away from Kyungsoo’s remorseful stare, who utters a soft sorry because he can’t be reprimanding towards the king. But Chanyeol understands and only nods, soon leaving for the garden when his brother tells him where Baekhyun had gone.  
  
It isn’t long before he finds the younger, spotting him by the edge of the fountain where he sits surrounded by pink flowers that have yet to bloom.  
  
Baekhyun looks up surprised, eyes wet with tears, but he hurries to avoid Chanyeol’s gaze as he begins to walk cautiously towards him. He feels the king sitting beside him, and he almost has half the mind to shout when Chanyeol sits a little too close, the side of his leg pressing up against Baekhyun’s. Just pretend he’s not there. But it’s not easy because Chanyeol beckons a baby water lily to crawl up onto the edge of the fountain, where it starts playing with Baekhyun’s hands. He gasps at first before he’s laughing under his breath at the cute sight, unaware of Chanyeol staring at him.  
  
“You use two of your fingers to draw circles into the middle of your hand,” Chanyeol starts, although Baekhyun just stares at his lap and not his face. He notices a mark of a cherry blossom beginning to glow on the finger where the older’s wedding ring would be in the human world – he has the same cherry blossom etched onto his skin, “and then you slide it over your… your symbol. It brings the flower to life.”  
  
Baekhyun hums, not quite listening but Chanyeol can tell he’s being attentive, so he takes his husband’s hand in his despite the small protest that follows, and manoeuvres the painter closer to the fountain. With every step closer, the human boy’s breath is caught in his throat, finding his face closer to Chanyeol’s than what was intended. His droopy eyes flicker from eyelashes that kiss at the taller’s cheeks and onto a dimple when he purses his lips in concentration. The flowers go unnoticed when they laugh from their pods at the sight of Baekhyun’s soft eyes peeking through his longer hair while Chanyeol tries to concentrate on his husband’s hand.  
  
“Let me show you.” The taller says. Soon he’s rubbing small circles into Baekhyun’s palm where a small, glowing orb grows in his hand, calloused fingers felt against his soft skin as Chanyeol slides his fingers along his and sends the orb towards an unmoving flower.  
  
With a shake of its petals and a slight squirm, Chanyeol laughs while Baekhyun’s mouth falls open because a baby flower is coming to life by stretching itself in the fountain before it’s dawdling over to the other flowers. And Baekhyun feels something lurching inside his chest and to his throat, when he hears the king laugh, air tickling his ear, but he shakes himself out of his thoughts. Instead, he schools his expression back to a blank one, and the laughter dies down till the taller grows apprehensive.  
  
Chanyeol is still holding onto Baekhyun’s hand.  
  
“I am sorry.”  
  
It’s said with a gentle squeeze and a lopsided smile, and Baekhyun senses the trouble it takes for Chanyeol to apologise. The king probably never had a reason before to utter a sorry, not in the past centuries. Yet he says it, and the marks on their fingers glow in unison, but it’s only Baekhyun who realises. He basks in the feeling, even if only for a second, with his smile pulled at one corner as he stares at Chanyeol. The older man has his head bowed, almond eyes almost fluttering and eyebrows furrowed because of an unsettling feeling, only for Baekhyun and the flowers to see.  
  
“For everything I have said. Your manners are you, not like anyone else, but just y-you,” Chanyeol stutters over his words, “you… you are not useless. I do not know what I was saying. And I should have not said such things because you must be in my fate for a reason, and I in yours. So we cannot fight against the fates, can we? I cannot fight against you. A-And I am sorry, I am… so forgive me, your husband, please?”  
  
Baekhyun doesn’t respond.  
  
Instead he pulls his hand out of Chanyeol’s, his wide smile hidden when Chanyeol’s hopeful expression falls from his face, only for it to be replaced by one of confusion as Baekhyun kneels on the edge of the fountain. And without a thought, and through a blur on the king’s part, his small husband wraps his arms around his shoulders and pulls himself closer till his he has chin resting atop the taller’s hair. The white baby’s breath that have started growing in between bright red hair tickles at his smile. They bloom, but they remain small and soft against Baekhyun’s cheeks.  
  
The babys breath have grown, and the king is happy.  
  
“What is it that you are doing?”  
  
“I’m hugging you, idiot.”  
  
Baekhyun laughs into Chanyeol’s hair, into the babys breath, shaking against his husband, who carefully wraps his arms around the smaller’s hips. Chanyeol chuckles into the skin just below Baekhyun’s ribs himself. All the while, the human boy only hugs the king tighter when Jongin and Sehun appear out of nowhere in the garden, teasing their older brother till they’re pulled back in by the ears by their royal tutors.  
  
Chanyeol’s grumbles fall quiet beneath Baekhyun’s giggles.

 

 

~*~

 

 

The former queen passes by. She has her eyebrows arched up at Baekhyun as the boy shakes his head while holding onto a vase of talking flowers.

  
It’s only when she follows his line of sight that she quickly erupts into timid giggles as she spots her oldest son kneeling on the ground, his slacks crumpled and his robes pooling behind him. A puppy is licking Chanyeol’s face, and he laughs like the children sitting on the floor beside him. His crown tilts to one side but the king doesn’t bat an eyelid when it falls to the floor, even when Junmyeon scurries over to pick it up and holds the palace’s jewelled crown close to his chest in a panic. The royal tutor spots the queen and sends her a look of horror, but she dismisses him with a small smile, and so he turns to Baekhyun. The younger finds the man staring at him expectantly, waiting impatiently for something, before he realises that he must dismiss Chanyeol’s royal tutor – he’s part of the royal family after all.  
  
Junmyeon lets out a sigh of relief. And Chanyeol briefly looks up at the sound but instead he finds Baekhyun standing stoic against his mother, only to brush brightly when she grins between the both of them. He clears his throat and stands up swiftly, robes a mess from where they were on the floor. The child bow in a hurry and run off with their puppy in tow.  
  
Baekhyun misses the smile on his own face when Chanyeol looks on after the puppy, a frown evident on his husband’s face as he asks Junmyeon to recite out of his schedule for the day.  
  
“Who would have thought—”  
  
“I’m not in love with him.”  
  
With a look of surprise, having never been disrupted before, the queen’s laughter fills the palace and it has the flowers laughing in glee. The maids stop in their steps as the sight of the a red faced Baekhyun and their former queen laughing, warming their hearts, before Kyungsoo calls for them to have dinner ready for the family. Jongin whizzes past at the sound of the head chef, but he stumbles because his mother is laughing in a way she hasn’t for years. He sends a shy, thankful smile towards his still blushing brother-in-law. Sehun walks past soon enough, writing his hundred and third letter to Luhan, who is nowhere to be seen ever since he left town in search of the book.  
  
“I was not assuming such a thing, my dear,” their mother says as she cradles the side of Baekhyun’s face, her words still filled with laughter, “but I am not denying it either.”  
  
And Baekhyun ponders her words – weeks after, without the book in sight, but the moon has woken up eighty-four times since he has gotten here, the human himself having lost count.  
  
The former queen’s from weeks ago wander around in his mind as he washes the dishes inside the kitchen palace despite Kyungsoo’s protests, who tried ushering the lunar king back to his room. Jongin had soon called and the chef left with a smile when Baekhyun dismissed him. He felt out of place doing that – dismissing people – just like he had dismissed the maids for the afternoon, as nothing is to be done around the palace and Chanyeol is testing spells again.  
  
“You should not be here.”  
  
Baekhyun drops the glass into the sink at the sound of a deep voice heavy with sleep, wincing as it breaks into small pieces that bounce up and leave cuts against his hands, against his markings that grow over the wounds, “don’t sneak up on me like that!”  
  
“I did not do anything—why are you bleeding?!”  
  
Chanyeol rushes over to him, thankful for his lack of robes from where he had discarded them and had pulled up the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows because he decided to make a few spells himself. He takes Baekhyun’s hand in between his, the blood red and seeping through the human boy’s fingers and onto his own. And when Baekhyun yelps under the sting of cold water on his cuts, the taller loosens his grip and sends a worried look that disappears as quickly as it had come because Baekhyun’s suddenly smiling up at him.  
  
“Is it my fault?” Chanyeol asks. His movements are hurried while he reaches for the cabinet above for a clean cloth, but he starts marvelling at Baekhyun’s hands, beautiful and slender against his own when he goes to cover the wounds. He doesn’t wait for his husband to reply before he softly chastises him, “how can you be so careless? What if I was not here?”  
  
Baekhyun furrowed his eyebrows, wanting to say that he’s perfectly capable of looking after himself if it wasn’t for Chanyeol picking up the cloth and rubbing his thumb against his cuts. With each stroke, pink rose water traces over his cuts and closes them up, blood no longer falling from them. It’s as if the cuts didn’t exist. And with each stroke, Chanyeol misses the look on Baekhyun’s face, one that mirrors the aching but welcoming beat of his heart as his eyes move from Chanyeol’s lips, his nose, his cheeks, and they finally land on almond eyes that are looking back at him perplexed.  
  
“Do I have something on my face?”  
  
Baekhyun doesn’t reply. Instead, without a thought as if time has decided to slow down in the most cliché moment, he reaches up on his tiptoes and places a small kiss on the corner of Chanyeol’s mouth. It lingers and so do Baekhyun’s hands on the king’s chest, but he quickly pulls away and leaves before his husband can say a word.  
  
Chanyeol only turns around, strolling out of the kitchen after the smaller but Baekhyun is nowhere to be found in the long, lighted hallway. Yet the maids see their king ruffling his own hair, a spring to his step when he walks back to his study room. They giggle to each other because it’s the first time in forever that they have seen the eldest son of the royal family smile so wistfully, even more so surprising for the younger princes for Sehun and Jongin tumble over each at the sight of their brother nodding his head at them in a gentle greeting.  
  
He’s only even seen with embers in his hair.  
  
And for the first time, a few mornings after, the gardeners scurry out of the maze when they see their king strolling in. The flowers bend at the stems to greet him, the mermaids singing a song that had been sung to him ever since the day he was born, but the statues stay still sun under the sunlight with stone smiles.  
  
Apprehensive as he smooths over the velvet of his robes over and over again, Chanyeol clears his throat when he spots Baekhyun near the fountain.  
  
The smaller doesn’t hear, too focused as he sits on his knees, beckoning a silent water lily towards him. It has Chanyeol smiling behind his palm, and it widens with the boy tries to repeat the spell he had shown him. Yet the flowers stay still and Baekhyun huffs before he’s straightening himself up at the king’s presence, with leaves still stuck in his hair, smudges of soil across his skin where paint would normally be. But his crescent eyes and his mouth that opens up in a rectangle smile has Chanyeol fumbling in his steps.  
  
“I was helping Minseok tend the garden. I asked him if I could do the rest because Jongdae came by, and you work those two men far too hard, Chanyeol,” and Baekhyun starts blabbering, words a mess and his hair still dishevelled, his wings fluttering as he grows louder when he sees the tips of the king’s pointed ears perking up, “the peonies talked to me today. They’re just like you, grouchy and easily aggravated, but we seem to be getting along fine. I’ll try again tomorrow so they’ll open up to me even more!”  
  
“And if they do not?” Chanyeol teases, lips quirking as Baekhyun frowns down at his hands and then his grey eyes are glancing up at the taller before they fall back down again.  
  
“They I’ll try again the day after!”  
  
“And if they do not the day after?”  
  
“Then the day after that day!”  
  
“And if they do not—”  
  
Chanyeol should have seen it coming, even though his eyes had been taking glimpses of the sky, the moon nowhere in sight but the sun seemed just as happy – he should have seen it coming. But he missed the quiet huff Baekhyun had let out, and the annoyed spark in his eyes when the taller let out a laugh. Even the flowers had seen it coming when Baekhyun reaches up on his tiptoes just like he had done a week or so again, completely disregarding the king’s look of surprise as he tugs the man close by holding onto his pointed ears and kisses him.  
  
It’s not the slightest bit soft, the kiss, that it has Chanyeol stumbling backwards and Baekhyun murmuring an apology but it only has him moving his lips against his husband’s. Plump bottom lip caught between Baekhyun’s, the younger kisses him softly, only to realise what he’s doing when Chanyeol groans lowly. He pulls back and trips up on his robes, staring wide eyed at Chanyeol, who’s finding it hard to catch his breath. Baekhyun starts to panic.  
  
“I just—I… I didn’t mean to—”  
  
Chanyeol throws his own thoughts out of the window just like the other had done, cups Baekhyun’s face and tilts it upwards to crash his lips against the smaller’s. It doesn’t stay soft, turning needy and all kinds of fervent, lips burning against each other while the flowers cover themselves with their petals. Baekhyun’s hands that are clutching onto the king’s velvet robes tighten when Chanyeol dips his thumbs into the corners of his mouth, prying his mouth open just the slightest and kisses him deeper. And it’s when he moves to pull away that Baekhyun chases after his lips, placing his swollen ones against the taller’s again. He still pulls away. Yet Chanyeol finds the sight of a dazed looking Baekhyun so enthralling, cheeks pink and eyes hazy, and so he dips down again to kiss him, once, twice, thrice—  
  
“Get a room!”  
  
“Who taught you that?”  
  
“Luhan says the humans use it to express a humorous comment often said to couples engaged in heavy public display of affection, and I stand corrected, judging from our brother and his husband.”  
  
“…I did not find it funny, Sehun.”  
  
And the sparks are back in Chanyeol’s hair as soon as he pulls away from the kiss, reluctantly, while Baekhyun stares down at the ground because he can’t believe he had just done that. The human boy is too caught up in his thoughts because he doesn’t notice his husband stomping over towards the two oblivious younger princes, sinking down onto the edge of the fountain with his knees weak and heart hammering inside his chest like the fairy tales said they would do. The flowers tease him, too.  
  
“Is it not awfully quiet, Jongin?”  
  
“What do you mean by that?”  
  
“You know what I—run!”  
  
One word from Sehun has the younger brothers hiking up their own robes and running out of the maze with an infuriated Chanyeol hot on their heels. They still turn around and throw taunting words over their shoulders to their elder brother, but that’s before Jongin runs into a hedge and Sehun has to drag him along towards the entrance of the maze. They all bow to the former queen lounging on the grass, yet the calls of their names are ignored and so is the disapproving look on their mother’s face.  
  
And somewhere in the palace, Sehun is screaming at Jongin to go find another place to hide away from Chanyeol.  
  
Baekhyun is left to tend the flowers again, but this time his blush burns him like the ache in his chest.

 

 

~*~

 

 

It’s an unusual morning.

  
As Baekhyun roams the hallways of the palace, his fingers tapping along bannisters and glass vases, only stopping when he bows down to whoever walks past, he finally joins the family in the feasting hall for breakfast. And it would have been usual, like every other morning like the past few months without Baekhyun screaming at his breakfast and albeit it consisting of the family bickering from their seats, if it wasn’t for Chanyeol trailing behind Baekhyun. With a dreamy look on his face. He does this as he seats at the head of the table, his eyes hooded and soft and never leaving Baekhyun, who only purses his lips at him.  
  
“Our brother has the lovenings, is that not right, Chanyeol?” Jongin asks as he elbows Sehun to join in.  
  
Chanyeol just hums, chin in his palm and almond eyes still hooded.  
  
“You think Baekhyunee is beautiful.”  
  
Another hum.  
  
“You drool so much in your sleep, it could be collected up into buckets.”  
  
And another hum.  
  
The younger princes sigh, finding no fun in the way their brother isn’t responding like he usually does, left to munch on their bread with bitter scowls in place. They aggressively chew when their eyes land on Baekhyun as he stares back at them with his own droopy eyes pleading for help, anything to stop Chanyeol from staring at him like that. But it’s no good – they have lost Chanyeol to the so called lovenings, a literal love bug that leaves puffs of baby pink around the corners of the room.  
  
“It will pass. It is lovening season after all,” the queen says, flicking through spells as she reads about the town’s wellbeing, a few gossips here and there, and she casts as glance towards Jongin, “or maybe it is not. We had thought our Jongin had the lovening, but it only turned out that he had indeed fallen for Kyungsoo. We cannot be too sure about your older brother here.”  
  
No one notices the look on Baekhyun’s face or the sag of his shoulders when he quietly eats his soup – something Chanyeol had ordered for him because it’s unmoving like the rest of the dishes. Baekhyun has yet to grow accustomed to their food, and the royal family had thought it was just an Earthling habit he had picked up so they let him be.  
  
Why would he be in love with me, Baekhyun frowns, and he shakes away his thoughts along with the feeling of something pinching at his chest with burning fingertips. But it’s just Chanyeol smiling at him, eyes soft, lips soft, like it had nothing to do with the lovenings at all.  
  
“May I be excused, please? I promised to help Minseok with the flowers.” Baekhyun asks, tucking his napkin away after wiping his mouth clean, before he’s bowing to the former queen as she gestures towards the door.  
  
“You need not ask, my dear. Feel free… where do you think you are going, Chanyeol.”  
  
Chanyeol turns around to see if his mother is addressing someone else but he’s the only one other than Baekhyun standing at the table, and so he points a finger at himself questioningly. The human boy also stares at his husband, eyes becoming weary and mouth settling into a thin line. And it’s almost uncanny how he holds the same expressions as the former queen, both staring at Chanyeol, while Sehun and Jongin fall back in their seats in surprise.  
  
“With Baekhyun, of course.” The king states, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world to trail after his husband, something that was never expected of him until this morning, “Am I not allowed to escort my husband to the garden?”  
  
“You have already escorted him to the powder room.”  
  
“The rightful duties of a husband.”  
  
The former queen stays silent, seconds falling into minutes before she’s shaking her head at Chanyeol despite letting him leave with Baekhyun. The human sighs. But it’s as if the moon herself is shining her light inside the palace halls as the two walk along the hallways, even though it was barely morning with the sun still yawning. Chanyeol walks behind Baekhyun with his baby’s breath moving in his hair.  
  
It’s unusual when the king walks through his hallways like every other day, but the maids are looking up at him as if he’s lost his head. He slows his steps, his robes sliding along the marble floors and his crown almost sliding off his head. The whispers are loud against pointed ears, some beckoning others to come and look because even the frown on the king’s face isn’t enough for them to look away. Baekhyun falters, too, fidgeting with his fingers, especially so when the maids start throwing him wordless praises with ecstatic smiles on their faces.  
  
It isn’t until Chanyeol shrugs his shoulders and passes the mirror in the hallway, the smile back on his face as he follows after Baekhyun, in which he finds himself stumbling backwards quickly.  
  
The king screams, and the land’s people stay still.  
  
There are cherry blossoms blooming in his hair.  
  
“Chanyeol, what’s wrong?” Baekhyun turns around, only for his worry to disappear when his eyes land on the sight before him.  
  
The taller has his robes pulled up until it covers him from head to toe, everything but his face and his uneasy, panicked look. He’s clutching the velvet cloth under his chin, clasped, but he feels the cherry blossoms blossoming against his scalp and through the red tresses of his hair. His markings turn a bright red against his wrists, cold sweat against his heated skin. He’s flustered. And so, concerned and mildly curious, Baekhyun reaches forward to pluck the robes away, finding Chanyeol’s behaviour more unusual than it had been this morning, but only for him to lose his soft look and jolt away from his smaller husband.  
  
“W-What are you doing?”  
  
The question goes unanswered and Junmyeon steps out of a study room, skipping with a clipboard in his hands. Chanyeol spots him soon enough, running towards him with his robes still wrapped around his face, jostling his royal tutor until he drops his papers on the floor. The king’s eyes are blinking at everything but nothing, running past Junmyeon before he’s rushing back to him again, his long legs not knowing which way to go.  
  
“Your highness, is everything fine?”  
  
Chanyeol snaps, “Nothing is fine! Absolutely not! Tell my mother we need to meet in the royal hall, near the thrones. And make sure he… he does not get a whiff of this meeting whatsoever.”  
  
Baekhyun is left standing there for a while, soon shrugging to himself as he strolls out into the garden.  
  
It must be the lovenings.

 

 

~*~

 

 

It isn’t the lovenings.

  
It’s only the sound of Sehun chortling to himself in the corner of the royal hall because Jongin had been called over to the thrones by their mother as soon as Chanyeol had ran into the halls, with Kyungsoo in tow, who ignores the younger prince’s teasing wiggle of his eyebrows. They all stand in front of the head throne, eyes calculating and fixed on the pale, pink petals being thrown onto the red carpet, some stuck in between the creases of the king’s robes.  
  
And there sits Chanyeol with a hand covering his face while his fingers pluck out the said petals of the cherry blossoms in his hair. It’s no use. The plucked petals only grow back in place, starting of as small buds that bloom. There are piles of plucked ones sitting by Chanyeol’s feet, who silently weeps to himself, because it’s something his hair has never done – grow cherry blossoms – even the former queen has no clue that the magical gene has skipped a few generations.  
  
They wait impatiently as Junmyeon skims through the book borrowed from the elders, chapters of all things fate has planned for Chanyeol’s lifetime from centuries ago, just like it had written his father’s. Just like it will plan his future heirs. But Chanyeol grows drowsy while the royal tutor hums to himself, a finger tapping against his lips as he spares the king a few glances here and there, mouth sometimes parting open only for him to shake his head and close it again in confusion.  
  
“Ah yes, cherry blossoms for our king.” He recites, finger leaving his lips to skim across the almost tattered pages, where every word has been written by a purple feather and blank ink.  
  
“Yes, cherry blossoms. I think we are aware. What does it say after that? Is this my impending doom?” Chanyeol asks from his throne, his words muffled against his hands as he refuses to look up and see the look of uneasiness on Junmyeon’s face, or his mother’s.  
  
But it’s nothing of that sort and Junmyeon finds himself snorting, “Not at all, your highness. Well, it depends on the way you may see it. For some it may be the one thing they are looking for in life – it certainly is for the fates and the elders – while for others… it will all end well if you do well. And I quote, all is fair in love and war, my king—”  
  
“Just tell me, Junmyeon.”  
  
“Yes, right,” the royal tutor coughs before he’s closing the book and holding it against his chest, but the smile blooming on his face has Chanyeol shuffling around in his throne, “cherry blossoms, our flower of spring. They stand for love, your highness. You have fallen in love.”  
  
Love.  
  
_Love._  
  
The king has fallen in love.  
  
Jongin’s laugh is abruptly cut off when Chanyeol picks himself up from his seat in a hurry, stumbling into the side and the petals in his lap fall to join the ones at his feet. He stares at Junmyeon who stays smiling, then his brother, and finally his mother, bewildered. The wild beating of his heart goes ignored along with everything that is cliché, refusing to admit that it’s heart behind all that and not a certain smile filled with crescent eyes and a beautiful mouth. No, this cannot be, he thinks as palms rub against his eyes, only for him to pull back and see the gold mark on his ring finger turning a deep shade of black that stands out against his sun kissed skin.  
  
“That—that is impossible. I… I only grow… carnations,” his voice is low, somewhat fearful, and it terrifies the Florenstines as they adorn the glass windows of the royal hall with vines, “but with whom?!”  
  
His answer comes in the form of double doors bursting open to reveal Baekhyun dishevelled as ever, leaves stuck in his hair like the usual sight and soil against his soft skin. His eyes droopy but bright, peeking through his hair that is in dire need of a trim, widen when he finally spots his husband. They turn into crescents, just like the moon in autumn.  
  
And that’s when the cherry blossoms bloom wildly with gold petals in Chanyeol’s hair.  
  
“They’re so pretty!” Baekhyun cheers in awe. He picks up his robes as he slides against the floor and up to the throne, cautious of dirtying the floors with the soil he used to plant seeds but his fingers itch to touch the flowers in the king’s hair.  
  
No one notices Sehun beside Jongin until he clears his throat to stop the laughter tickling against his lips, “of course they are – beautiful that is. He is love with—”  
  
“With the skies! What else?” Chanyeol interrupts with a forced laugh that becomes strangled when he feels the cherry blossoms only blooming larger against his scalp because Baekhyun is staring up at him expectantly with a smile that’s lopsided and far too cute for the king. And as long as he looks at him with his teeth starting to gnaw at his bottom lip and his eyes shimmering under the lights, the fire embers refuse to spark from the king’s hair.  
  
“Oh, it is a pretty day out today! It must be the sunlight. No wonder the cherry blossoms look so beautiful.”  
  
Or maybe, it’s just you.

 

 

~*~

 

 

“Hey, Chanyeol.”

  
“Yes, beautiful,” idiot, the taller thinks, opting to turn around onto his side instead of burying his face into his pillow, “I mean Baekhyun.”  
  
It’s barely night but the moon is yawning after bidding the sun farewell, having only woken up to look after the land. The mermaids smile and so do the statues as they start harmonising, readying their lullabies to send the Luminans, the Pixians and Florenstines to sleep. The town is quiet and the quaint little shops stay still while the entirety of Ignisilandia is almost asleep.  
  
Baekhyun had moved from the floor to the far end of bed the day the king had apologised in the garden maze. They both lay awake in a bed fit for the king and big enough for four families, and Chanyeol is glad that the smaller can’t hear the harsh pounding of his heart against his ribcage. Neither can he see the cherry blossoms in the dark room as they grow bright pink just like the blush on the taller’s face. The blush burns and the king thinks he’s never been this nervous before, always stoic and always asleep when his mind willed him to, but the thoughts are hammering away inside his head.  
  
And he can no longer sleep naked, not as long as Baekhyun sleeps under the same duvet, even though he finds it easier to fall asleep when he can feel the silk against his bare skin, but that’s another matter altogether.  
  
“I…” Chanyeol hears Baekhyun’s intake of breath through the airy night, and so his gentle hum follows to show that he’s listening, “the queen has said that there’s a ball in a few days’ time. It’s… it will be out first formal event together, me as your husband and as their lunar king. It’s what the queen said. Do you… do you think it’ll be okay?”  
  
“Baekhyun…”  
  
“I’m not from the line of royalty and I have no family either, but here I am as a lunar king. A title for someone else besides me. I’m not special; I can’t control a single spell, and it’s all because I’m—” _human. Someone you hate more than Earth itself,_ “never mind. My thoughts are just a mess. I’ll be okay in the morning.”  
  
“Baekhyun.”  
  
Even through the darkness, with the moonlight dimmer than it usually is, Baekhyun can see Chanyeol’s unfaltering gaze on him. It crawls up his arms and through his loose top, up to his spine where it settles at the base of his back like there’s a hand holding him reassuringly. It grows heavier as his husband doesn’t look away, but he stays quiet while Baekhyun soon feels the same hand against his cheek, rough but warm. And maybe it’s in the way his heart seems to leap up into his throat, or the way Chanyeol’s fingers move along till they’re tucking strands of dark hair behind Baekhyun’s ear, that the smaller opens his mouth to ask again.  
  
“Why do you hate humans so much?”  
  
The question has Chanyeol pulling his hand back, not quite sure where to rest it when Baekhyun’s looking at him like that, as if he can’t quite believe the answer he has yet to say.  
  
“Why would I not hate them?”  
  
Baekhyun heaves a sigh and the restless feeling comes a little too early, his voice quiet as he speaks, “Chanyeol, they aren’t all that bad.”  
  
“That is what you think.”  
  
“It’s not what I think; it’s what I know.”  
  
“Do not delude yourself—”  
  
“I’m not—”  
  
“Why are you so—so… why must you grow so defensive about them?” Chanyeol asks anxiously but his voice is dangerously quiet against the silent room. He turns around to sit at the edge of the bed where his toned back is dark against the moonlight and is the only thing Baekhyun can see, “what is it that is so good about them, in which you grow so uptight. When our people have hated them for centuries, and when the few humans we had the unfortunate pleasure of meeting have done nothing but bad to Ignisilandia. What is it that is so great about them, Baekhyun?”  
  
Baekhyun sits up and the duvet bunches around his feet as he looks Chanyeol.  
  
“It is as if you are one of them.”  
  
“And if I was?”  
  
The human looks up at the same time the king stares back at him over his shoulder, eyes heady against the golden linings across his shoulder blades sparkling slightly just like the gold dusting at the edge of his wings – wings bigger than the land’s people, more beautiful than the former queen’s – but they’re tucked away and hidden just like they have been for centuries. He still speaks after a shuddering intake of breath.  
  
“I would not be in love with you.”

 

 

~*~

 

 

You just left,” Kyungsoo repeats, baffled as he stops whipping up a bowl of double cream, “after he confessed to you.”

  
Baekhyun squirms in his stool with his head still buried in his arms on the kitchen island, “it was hardly a confession, Kyungsoo.”  
  
“Hardly a confession? Our king is short with his words but he had just implied that he is in love with you just a few nights ago. The moon will not tell him for you, Baekhyun.” The palace’s chef explains loudly above the clanking of his bowls because the kitchen staff have retired for the night and so have the family.  
  
Kyungsoo hadn’t expected a tiresome Baekhyun mulling over a bowl of cubed ice-cream, drizzled with something the human hopes is honey. The orange fireflies were the only source of light when he entered as they floated around the lunar king, who gave him a small smile as if to assure him he wouldn’t be a disturbance to whatever the chef plans to do late at night in the kitchen. But it didn’t take long before Baekhyun finds himself confiding in Kyungsoo as the Luminan listens with his pointed ears and a button nose that wrinkles up at some parts of the story.  
  
“You don’t understand, Kyungsoo—”  
  
“You sure do talk in a very funny manner, my king.”  
  
Baekhyun blinks up the shorter male before he’s shaking his head, dismissing the sentence with a quirk of his lips and the heavy sound of his spoon against the ice-cream bowl, “he may be in love with me, and maybe it is the lovenings, but what sort of love would it be if he doesn’t love me the same if I was a human? Would I still not be the same as I am right now to him?”  
  
Kyungsoo merely shrugs, but Baekhyun is too lost in his frustration to notice the chef’s quivering hands, yet the Luminan’s voice is still somewhat blunt, “I do not understand why you seem to be so worked up, my king. In this universe, even in Earth, you would still be the same person, would you not? Why think of a probability that does not make sense in any universe – of you being human.”  
  
“I…”  
  
“But I would understand if you were human.”  
  
“Kyungsoo—”  
  
“Which you are.”  
  
The fireflies flicker off with a buzz and Kyungsoo can see Baekhyun paling under the one, dim light standing above the kitchen island. But Baekhyun’s pleading before the Luminan can get a word through, even when he’s shaking his head at the human which doesn’t stop the _please_  Baekhyun is stuttering out.  
  
“Please don’t tell him!”  
  
“Do not worry. I will not,” Kyungsoo says, voice meeker than Baekhyun has ever heard it, but he whisks away at his whipping cream like he’s talking about the weather and not as if he just found out that the lunar ruler of their land is human – Luhan had warned him off this, “but I must tell you, my king. I have human blood, too, from my mother.”  
  
“W-What?”  
  
“The king knows of my story and he has yet to banish me from the palace like he had wished to do so when Jongin first brought me here. The king hated me even though my father was one of his people, although I harbour powers just like all the full blooded Luminans do. He hated me yet he did not do anything. You may think it is because of Jongin as I am bonded to him that he may have let me stay, but it is nothing like that. Your husband does not hate humans. He is under the pretence of hating them because… because...”  
  
Kyungsoo suddenly starts stuttering and Baekhyun ignores all the cliché feelings in his gut choosing to wave it away as his fingers tap against the cold granite countertop. He tries blinking back the feeling of sleep, but he stills just like Kyungsoo does.  
  
“Because what, Kyungsoo.” The human asks in a stern voice, authoritative just like the former lunar kings and queens before him without him realising.  
  
Kyungsoo grows reluctant, “it is nothing, my king.”  
  
“I asked you a question, Kyungsoo. Why does my husband hate my kind so much?”  
  
“I said it is nothing—”  
  
“Just tell me,” Baekhyun’s voice falls, heavy against the tense atmosphere as the two suddenly grow restless, until Kyungsoo is nodding slowly at him, “please.”  
  
“It is—it is because… because one had broken his heart centuries ago.”  
  
The kitchen lights turn on, leaving the two to blink furiously against the harsh brightness, and they barely recognise the intruder before the sparks are hitting the floor in flaming embers. They bounce of the tiled floors of the palace kitchen, hitting against the granite and leaving little sparks to land against Baekhyun’s skin. He winces and it goes unnoticed as Chanyeol stares at Kyungsoo until the chef is leaving behind his bowl of whipped cream and running to wherever Jongin must be.  
  
Baekhyun parts his mouth to call after Kyungsoo, or to scold Chanyeol for scaring the boy like that – he doesn’t know – but everything he has yet to say dies down when his husband strolls up to him, furious and uncaring about the fire embers that land against both their arms.  
  
“When I had left your question unanswered, it did not mean to say that you were allowed to go ask my people for answers.”  
  
Chanyeol’s voice dips lower, menacing after restless nights of wondering why did the other side of his bed seem so empty just because his husband hasn’t been occupying it. After days of the palace talking about Baekhyun with the lunar king nowhere in sight, not even a glimpse of his wings, Chanyeol couldn’t help but become furious at the smaller.  
  
Baekhyun clenches his hands into fists by his side as he turns away from Chanyeol, voice just as quiet, “is it wrong of me to ask things about my husband when he’s brushing off my questions himself?”  
  
“They remain as questions for a reason.”  
  
“But I need to know.”  
  
“You do not need to know, Baekhyun!” The king snaps before he’s taking his husband by the arm and lifting him up from his seat, with a grip that’s tight and unrelenting, hot against the human’s markings, “for the sake of the skies, Baekhyun, mind your own damn business. It has nothing to do with you. It will never have anything to do with you, so stop being so pathetically persistent like—like those humans!”  
  
Baekhyun isn’t thinking when he slaps Chanyeol’s hand away from his arm, and he shakes his head as his husband reaches for him again, gentler this time, after pinching the bridge of his nose to keep his frustrations inside. But the younger slips past him, his face blank and grey eyes only blinking through his long fringe, and his wings are carried heavily against the floor. Chanyeol almost goes to pick them up to carry them for him.  
  
“Your past has everything to do with me – your husband,” and Baekhyun avoids the almond eyes staring down at him because he’s sure they’re apologetic, remorseful, maybe still filled with all the angered heat in the world. He doesn’t know, “but you’ll never understand.”  
  
_Even though you say you love me._

 

 

~*~

 

 

“Should you not be beside your husband?”  
  
From swinging chandeliers to sparkling wine, all seen through the wall to ceiling windows of the royal ballroom as the light pours out into the courtyard for all the Luminans to see, Chanyeol stands off to the edge of room with his brothers. They watch as men dance in perfectly cut suits while women wore gowns laced with crystals – dressed to the nines they would say. Their laughter is fluttery and the bows elegant when the former queen makes her way through the crowd of the leaders of the islands circling Ignisilandia, and then some who have married into royalty.  
  
She finds her three sons soon enough, with the princes dressed in their royal attire consisting of sashes and crowns, hair slicked back and the flowers in their hairs more beautiful than ever. The three stand tall and proud as they’re sought out by women and men alike, although all three are wedded or to be wedded to their bonded ones and in return have left behind some distraught hearts while others wished them happiness. They were like princes out of fairytales until Jongin almost spills his champagne flute across Sehun’s rich black suit, causing an argument to break out between the two.  
  
“Could you two be any more idiotic than you are right now?” Chanyeol asks gruffly, a warning in his tone that has both the younger princes straightening up and standing a distance away from the aggravated king.  
  
“Is our dear brother mad because Baekhyun has yet to talk to you after your fight,” Sehun taunts as he ignores the questioning glare directed at him. Jongin nods in agreement before the youngest prince adds in another two cents, “next time, would you please have your lover’s tiffs in your room. The moon and the palace do not really want to hear of your fights, especially when the stars have been put to sleep.”  
  
“You heard that?” And Chanyeol almost looks out of place when he asks, his fingers hesitant against the collar of his own black suit, shaping his long legs and the sturdiness of his back that he still looks somewhat intimidating.  
  
“Who has not? We are only thankful that the two of you had not decided to reconcile in the kitchen. Who knows what we would have heard if you had not been such a fool to your husband. Poor Baekhyun can only handle so much and you be being selfish is not one of them.”  
  
“Selfish,” the king repeats, incredulous and heavy hearted, “I was anything but selfish. He had been asking of things the palace has not dared to talk about in years.”  
  
“You mean you had not dared to talk about in years.”  
  
“I do not mean—bless the seven moons!”  
  
The king’s exclamation is loud against the hushed whispers, some chuckling at his reaction while others sigh wistfully, even though the hushed whispers become one big blur as the former queen escorts their new lunar king down the stairs. And Baekhyun is there, his nerves clear as day when his slender fingers moves to fidget with the buttons of his crisp, cut suit, before he’s taking the former queen’s hand as little, golden fireflies rest atop his shoulders. He smiles uneasily at the land’s people, at those who couldn’t quite believe that the husband of Ignisilandia’s king exists – the rumours of the ceremony were true.  
  
But it’s the sight before them, of Baekhyun’s wings standing proudly against his back, the same colour of the moon smiling outside, and they flutter once he spots Chanyeol behind the crowd. His eyes are just as grey with flecks of brown seemingly golden under the dusting of dark eyeshadow against his eyelids, soft and sensual and stirring something up inside the king that has him briefly glancing at the marbled floors. Yet, he looks back up and he notices the freckles on the smaller’s face, painted on by a spell onto his rounded cheeks but they glow when he suddenly smiles. The guests’ murmurs grow louder as they watch with fond smiles between the two.  
  
Because the human has never seen a more a beautiful sight – a beautiful muse – than Chanyeol standing there as the cherry blossoms in hair immediately bloom against the red that stands bright against his dark suit. Of almond eyes that are bright just like his markings he wears beneath his clothes, and of everything cliché, Chanyeol stands tall and proud like he’s his husband.  
  
He is.  
  
And the king has never seen someone so breath-taking.  
  
But he’s too stubborn to let Baekhyun know that.  
  
Grabbing a glass from a tray of iced drinks, Chanyeol turns around and downs it in one go, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand instead of the sleeve of his suit. A king can’t be so reckless. But Baekhyun still stares, questioning because that is the only way to ignore the burn against his throat of having his husband not being able to stand the sight of him. The younger still steps forward to greet the brothers first for the night and with one glimpse of Baekhyun, Chanyeol is sauntering to the other end of the hall, but not before brushing past his husband’s shoulder like a stranger might.  
  
“Pardon me, I did not see you there, Mr…” Chanyeol trails off, a hand gesturing for the smaller’s name and it only irks the latter further as he stands their impatiently.  
  
The younger grits his teeth, “Byun Baekhyun.”  
  
“You seem more like a Park to me. Park Baekhyun.”  
  
“Hmm, maybe if I ever find a Park to marry.”  
  
Chanyeol leaves with a scowl, one that mirrors Baekhyun’s own.  
  
As the new lunar king, Baekhyun’s night surprisingly turns uneventful, finding himself standing by the desserts table while Kyungsoo comes out of the kitchen once every few minutes with trays full of desserts. Tamed, unmoving desserts the queen had requested for Baekhyun, but they were all unaware that Kyungsoo had just used human recipes from Earth. The chef wanders around, sometimes patting his friend on the shoulder when he notices Chanyeol conversing with other princes like he’s the slightest bit mindful of his bored husband.  
  
Kyungsoo watches beside a fuming Baekhyun as the princes disperse only for a hoard of princesses crowding around the king, with some lingering while others are seeking out inappropriate conversations. But Baekhyun does nothing but lean against the desserts table as Chanyeol smiles a little too bashfully, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes evident and so is the dimple in his cheek. The ladies laugh in sync, somewhat haughty and tinkling and maybe it’s only to the younger lunar king, but it Baekhyun licking the corner of his mouth to wipe off his scowl. He lifts up his own soft drink to greet Jongin, who walks by with handfuls of cake. And he watches, taking tentative sips while his husband laughs away, head thrown back as someone tell him a joke.  
  
“There is no need to be jealous. He is your husband at the end of the day and well into the night, I would hope so.”  
  
Baekhyun splutters as Sehun sidles up to him, the youngest prince stoic looking as ever but with a small smile that is constantly tugging at his lips when he looks down at his much smaller brother-in-law. He clinks the side of his wine glass against Baekhyun’s without a word before he’s angling it towards Chanyeol, who barely steals a glance at the two, and his laughter is bubbling up the champagne.  
  
“Who said anything about me being jealous, Sehun?” Baekhyun asks as he hides his frown behind the rim of his glass.  
  
“You have been throwing daggers across the ballroom at my older brother, metaphorically of course. And I do not think your wine glass can take any more of your crushing grip.”  
  
“I haven’t done anything. You’re imagining things.”  
  
“There is that slight colloquial human talk again,” Sehun jaunts but it’s not the least bit incriminating like Chanyeol’s, and then he’s asking a question that leaves Baekhyun feeling uneasy, “why not go up to him? Ask him for a dance or simply accompany him as his husband. You did not hear it from me but if I were you, I would leave my husband in the hands of those people. They are not quite like the Luminans of Ignisilandia, in fact, they rule for wealth and the gossip. I would make sure that they know very well who you are to the king because it seems like they were not present when the elders introduced you.”  
  
“Sehun—”  
  
Baekhyun is left murmuring to himself again as he leans back against the desserts table but this time his glass is empty and his thoughts, too. Or maybe he is thinking a little too hard, or maybe the sight of hands pressing up against his husband’s chest while the said man laughs like there’s no tomorrow prods at his nerves, and that is how Baekhyun finds himself strolling up to the king with hurried steps.  
  
Bumping into the nearest person may or may not have been a mistake on Baekhyun’s part but he clasps his hands together with a cheer as they begin to utter. He looks at every set of eyes on him with a stretched smile and the guests look up at his fluttering wings in wonder, yet he refuses to meet Chanyeol’s puzzled stare and pinched frown. They’re all broken out of their reveries when the man Baekhyun had stumbled into glares at the human, standing upright and patting down his suit as he laughs airily once again when he notices that Chanyeol is no longer looking at anyone besides Baekhyun.  
  
“Watch where you are going, boy. Can you not see us talking to the king here?”  
  
“The king?” Baekhyun laughs a little too loud, earning hushed whispers as he moves to slip an arm around a bewildered Chanyeol, before he’s resting his head against the taller man’s shoulders. He smiles coyly, too, at those who don’t look the slightest bit pleased at the interruption, “I just wanted to make sure my husband was having a good time and all, and it seems like he is.”  
  
The whispers stop and bows follow as soon as the words are out of the lunar king’s mouth, and Baekhyun bows back out spite because Chanyeol is still scowling at him while the other princes stare in fascination. His wings have been tucked in for the past fourteen nights but for a ball dedicated to him, Baekhyun had no choice but to show off his wings like the former queen had suggested, to those who do not belong to Ignisilandia. And Chanyeol wishes he hadn’t because women and men marvel at the sight while Baekhyun is oblivious to their hooded stares.  
  
“But I guess he does not need me to accompany him, so who would like to join me—”  
  
Disappointed sighs fill the ballroom, but that is the least of Baekhyun’s concerns when Chanyeol suddenly grabs onto him by the hand and tugs him through suits and dresses, before it’s just the two of them in the empty hallways of the palace. The buzzing of the ball is drowned out beneath Baekhyun’s half-hearted protests.  
  
“Hey, hey, I was trying to have fun back there!” The smaller yells. His irritation bubbles up because Chanyeol has yet to speak to him since the start of the ball, but he glances behind just to narrow his eyes at the human boy. Baekhyun’s voice is still loud and bashful inside the halls, “I was planning to make new friends because clearly you were having such fun with your own that you forgot about me.”  
  
Baekhyun is pulled through the similar route that follows up to their bedroom, but barely as he doesn’t struggle and only throws words here and there to rile up the king.  
  
“I mean, I don’t know why you’re so worked up and—your sparky hair doesn’t scare me so stop that!”  
  
Chanyeol’s fire embers grow bolder against Baekhyun’s words, sparkling like fireworks as they bounce of the walls and the grounds but never once hitting the smaller. His hair colours itself a brighter red with every step he takes and Baekhyun is left astonished at the sight even if only for a second, as opposed to the maids scurrying away once they spot their furious king. The hallways are empty and the ballroom is no longer buzzing until the two reach their door.  
  
“Are you going to keep me in the room now until the ball is over—”  
  
Baekhyun jumps when he is pulled into the room and the door is slammed shut behind him. The handle rattles along with the fire embers that brighten up the whole room, and the younger momentarily forgets why Chanyeol brought him here. The orange and yellow sparks are enough to remind him, tinged with a golden hue as they lighten up the markings imprinted onto Chanyeol’s skin. It’s laced into his skin, up to his shoulders and his jaw until they reach his burning, almond eyes.  
  
Chanyeol is livid.  
  
“You took me away from the ball because you’re angry with me? Really, Chanyeol—”  
  
“Will you shut up?!”  
  
The king is fuming, but Baekhyun blinks up at his sudden outburst. His frown falls off his lips and he tucks his bottom lip between his top one, teething at it until he lets go and the corners of his mouth are pinched upwards. And then he’s tilting his head back, schooling his confused and somewhat fearful expression until Chanyeol can only see the moon’s light in his grey eyes. The fire embers lose their spark soon; the spark in Baekhyun’s eyes just grow brighter.  
  
“Make me.”  
  
Hands cradle his face, thumbs dip into the corners of his mouth to pry it open and trembling fingers card through red hair. Chanyeol pushes against Baekhyun up against the door just as the smaller groans into his mouth and pulls the older close by the nape of his neck as he presses his lips against his. But Baekhyun’s whole word tilts on his axis when Chanyeol suddenly pushes him up with fumbling hands, prompting him to wrap his legs around his waist as he leaves burning open mouthed kisses on his lips.  
  
Mouths move together in slow, heated kisses, lips left bruised and so swollen that Baekhyun dips down to kiss Chanyeol again, once, twice, till he has the king’s bottom lip caught between both of his.  
  
“Y-You are such a brat.”  
  
Baekhyun has his fingers knotted through Chanyeol’s tousled hair and the words are forgotten when the taller thrusts up hard in between his legs. The human keens, his lips leaving Chanyeol’s as he throws his head back and his arms barely holding onto the latter’s shoulders. He pants harshly with every knock of their hips, just as the wooden door only allows the taller to press his clothed member further into Baekhyun’s. The sight is too enthralling, calling for Chanyeol to place his lips against the base of Baekhyun’s neck where the top buttons of the smaller’s shirt presses into the side of his mouth, when he sucks at the skin until it turns a pale shade of pink. He thrusts up the same time Baekhyun kisses him again.  
  
“Like-like you’re any better.”  
  
Chanyeol pulls back and Baekhyun dips down to kiss him harder, the smaller’s suit jacket following after as it pools at Chanyeol’s feet along with his slacks. The taller strips of him off his clothes, falling alongside the bed, discarded over the railing and he leaves him in nothing but his briefs. Baekhyun is placed on the bed in a flurry before Chanyeol begins to take his own suit off, shrugging down his own slacks own his long legs, revealing tanned skin that glows under the burn of his embers illuminating the room. And the king wastes no time in taking a hold of Baekhyun’s thighs and pushing them up until his knees touch his chest.  
  
Their hips are joined once again as Chanyeol pressed their covered erections together through the mess of their minds, groaning lowly when he fits perfectly in between his husband’s legs. With one hand still holding onto Baekhyun’s thigh, the taller lets the other go so his free hand can wrap itself around the younger’s waist, till his hand is flat against the small of the human’s back. This has Baekhyun arching up just as Chanyeol roughly dips down his hips again.  
  
They rut against each other and Chanyeol kisses Baekhyun thoroughly, and it’s messy when his knees that are on either side of the smaller start to slip, fuelling the erratic movement of his thrusts. It’s too fast and too hot, and Baekhyun barely has enough time to breathe once he feels his husband’s fingers ghosting across the waistband of his briefs.  
  
“H-Hurry,” he huffs as his hands join the taller’s.  
  
He’s too busy searching around for the silk sheets beneath his hands, his fingers clutching onto them and he can do nothing but feel Chanyeol littering wet kisses down his neck. But he finds himself choking on a scream when the king takes one of his nubs into his mouth without warning, lewd suckling sounds filling the air and spurring the two on. Warm, plump lips wrapped around a bud, Chanyeol starts sucking hard enough for Baekhyun to push him away but the smaller’s hands slip against the bangles along his arms.  
  
“Stop t-that! C-Chanyeol, stop!”  
  
Baekhyun is too caught up in his pleasure to notice the light seeping through the skin of Chanyeol’s fingertips, turning wet like dew you’d find clinging to roses on rainy mornings. And the tall isn’t hesitant when he plunges his fingers into Baekhyun’s tight opening, middle finger easing in till he’s knuckle deep as he kisses the younger to distract him from the pain. But his pace is unrelenting and the sound of his palm slapping against Baekhyun’s skin is lost under their low groans and high pitched moans.  
  
Chanyeol’s eyes are hooded over and dark against the embers that fall besides Baekhyun, while the makeshift lube begins to leak out once he makes space for another finger. His husband’s name is stuck in his throat as he watches the way his fingers drive in and out, tiny droplets of rose dew falling out from the edges of his pink hole. It has the unsettling fire in his stomach setting alight. And it burns heavily, heart falling, too, when Baekhyun suddenly pulls his head up and it has him groaning lowly at the sight of the human sucking on his own fingers.  
  
With Baekhyun’s eyes locked on his, mumbling the king’s name against his skin, Chanyeol stops his ministrations. Only for him to dip down without a word to latch his hot mouth against Baekhyun’s twitching hole.  
  
Baekhyun’s knees are pressed into his chest, and every swipe of Chanyeol’s tongue has him shaking until his fingers are tightening in the taller’s hair when he feels a rough kiss against his puckered skin. Chanyeol’s palms are filled with Baekhyun’s pale globes, where he kneads them and pulls them apart so he can delve deeper like he’s been starved. His plump lips are pressed so hard against his husband’s ass that he can feel the supple skin at the corners of his mouth. His tongue wreaks havoc inside of Baekhyun, who wraps his thighs around the taller’s head, the feeling of his tongue breaching his rim, into his tight warmth, and lips closing around it to suckle at it again. And he sees reds and golds painted behind his eyelids.  
  
He’s a mess, and the king has barely started.  
  
“Just admit you were jealous.” Baekhyun gets out between shaky pants, laughing when Chanyeol’s hands feel ticklish against the skin of his thighs.  
  
“Me? Jealous? Oh, I do not think you can be any more wrong.”  
  
“So if I leave right now and spend the evening with those princes, you won’t be jealous?”  
  
Chanyeol responds with a smile that seems to sardonic, and he’s picking himself back up to fix his grip around Baekhyun’s legs, leaning down till his breath is warm and mixes with the younger’s. They’re nose to nose while one is grinning and the other frowns, but his voice is sultry unlike the anger still boiling up inside him, “why would I be jealous of other men when it is me you are married to.”  
  
Chanyeol pushes in till he’s buried to the hilt.  
  
Baekhyun feels pain searing through him but he also sees the stars against the back of his eyelids now, exploding into deeper oranges and yellows when Chanyeol carefully sinks in deeper. It doesn’t give away for a while and Chanyeol rains his face with butterfly kisses, letting his husband hold onto his hands tightly as he cries loudly into the skin of the taller’s shoulder. Pleasure soon builds up with every comforting kiss left on his lips. But he stills and concentrates on the feel of rough thumbs drawing circles into his hips, a wild fire beginning to burn low in his gut.  
  
The king thrusts his member into Baekhyun’s tight warmth, sending him straight into oblivious as his hips move in a delirious pace, driven by the smaller’s screams that start shaking the stars outside. He continues to thrust in and out, excruciatingly deep and slow, with the blunt head pressed up against a soft prostate.  
  
Chanyeol’s hands rest against the curve of Baekhyun’s ass and he pulls out, shoving his husband up against the headboard until he’s almost sat up. With one arm wrapped around his husband’s waist, Chanyeol enters him faster and Baekhyun meets every push of his hips frantically. The bed creaks underneath them and Chanyeol nearly comes at the sight of himself slipping in and out of the reddened hole, spreading Baekhyun wider till he’s pummelling into him at an unforgiving pace. The human boy only arches below him, taking more of Chanyeol as he does before he’s clenching tightly around the huge girth in desperation.  
  
“C-Call me jealous once again.”  
  
“Ha—do you- do you bask in me calling you names?”  
  
The filthy sounds of flesh slapping against slap are loud, and they both look a mess, pre-cum, sweat and lube dirtying the clean sheets. Chanyeol’s knees begin to slip but he hikes them back up on either side of Baekhyun’s hips, and he moans loudly when the other’s burning heat envelops more of his entire member. Baekhyun blinks away the tears pooling in his eyes, delirious from the heat he feels against, inside, his skin.  
  
“You are-- you are one jealous man, my king.”  
  
The man pulls his hips back and dives back in again, “call me what you want, Baekhyun. It does not change the fact that you are mine and no one else’s, not since I do not plan on letting you go.”  
  
Chanyeol pounds into him again. He pins Baekhyun’s ankles against the headboard, almost bending him in half, before he’s shoving himself further into the smaller’s ass. This way, the king thrusts his entire girth into him, till the top of his thighs are red from hitting against Baekhyun’s skin. And the smaller is screaming, his voice tearing through the buzz of the ballroom three floors below them, cracking halfway and becoming a mess when Chanyeol pulls his legs apart, allowing him to catch the hot sight of his member slipping inside.  
  
The effects of his lubrication spell begins to dry out and Chanyeol’s member feels even thicker, dragging against tight walls as he moves to pull out.  
  
They come undone when Baekhyun reaches up to hold his husband’s face in between his hands, pressing his mouth against the king’s once again.  
  
“I—I do not plan on ever letting you go.”  
  
It happens in another burst of colours, dominated by a pure white that blinds them, euphoric as Chanyeol comes deep inside of Baekhyun with ropes of cum slipping out even those their hips are still pressed together. He feels himself pulse against Baekhyun’s bundle of nerves that leaves the smaller sobbing into the kiss as Chanyeol thrusts into him languidly, riding out their highs and dirtying his walls.  
  
The taller moves to pull out but Baekhyun shakes his head and tightens his legs around the older’s waist, burying his nose into Chanyeol’s chest where the gold starts to simper. And he finds himself blushing just like the king when he groans into the corner of his mouth at the feeling of still being buried inside of him. His eyes flutter closed and Chanyeol’s move. But his eyes soften when the smaller’s breath begins to even out, embers no longer in place with their pants become more subdued until Baekhyun is left lightly snoring against his chest.  
  
Chanyeol falls asleep, too, with Baekhyun in his arms.

 

 

~*~

 

 

The moon laughs as she bids the land farewell, making her way around the sun who can only greet her with a yawn. The mermaids sink into their lakes and ponds and they fall asleep in their bays as foam builds up over the surface to stop the Pixians from falling over. The trees wake up instead, stretching out their branches, mumbling in the morning, some gruff while the birds pick at their leaves and some chirpy when the kristelyses pick at the acorns that have yet to fall to the ground.

  
Baekhyun feels the burning light of the sun’s bright sunset behind his closed eyes, the shuffling of his wings below him and an unknown warmth emanating from something above. His eyes soon open slightly, frantically blinking to get rid of the heady feeling of sleep.  
  
And the sigh that leaves through his lips is cut short as he picks up his hands to wipe at the sand in his eyes, but instead he finds his fingers interlaced with another set, more nimble and rougher than his. The fingers seem to slot into his almost too perfectly so they stay interlaced before he picks up the duvet braced against his cheat. He ducks his head down and it isn’t long until he’s screaming at the sight of a long leg – much longer than his – trapped in between his own bare ones. It’s quickly followed by cries when Baekhyun can feel just how naked the both of them are once he notices something touching the bottom of his back.  
  
It ends in a flurry as Chanyeol falls of the bed after Baekhyun screams into his ear, the smaller scrambling for more of the duvet to cover every inch of his naked, hickey covered skin. And the king lands on his bare butt, sure of the bruise forming just below his ass cheek from where it hit the edge of the bed before coming into contact with the marbled floor.  
  
The painter peers over in a hurry, wincing along with Chanyeol but he doesn’t let go off the covers and hesitantly reaches over to smooth out Chanyeol’s wild hair, plucking out loose cherry blossom petals and letting them fall to the floor. The taller pouts up at him, and Baekhyun feels that fluttering feeling in his chest again.  
  
“You know, I as the king is not all that used to rejection, but I assure you, I would have taken it quite well without you having to push me off the bed.”  
  
“I didn’t—it’s because we’re both naked!”  
  
“That is what happens when two people engage in intercourse. A lack of clothes is only appropriate in love-making. Many would think it is ideal when I am buried inside of you.” Chanyeol explains, eyes unblinking but he’s soothing his fingers over the bruise until it disappears into his flesh like nothing had happened.  
  
Baekhyun just stares at him like a gaping fish, “don’t talk so- so posh about us… us… doing you know what!”  
  
“You can say it, Baekhyun. I am sure the palace has heard us.”  
  
Even though the light from the spell has Chanyeol’s bruise fading into almost nothing, his hip bone still jolts in pain from the fall and the twist of his lips has Baekhyun looking up at him in worry. Chanyeol almost laughs when his husband starts fretting over him.  
  
“Are you—does it hurt?”  
  
The small smile playing on the king’s lips goes unnoticed, hidden by his palms so only his disapproving stare is apparent. But Baekhyun gently reaches from his hands, looking beautiful against the silk sheets of their bed where he’s almost drowning against the pillows, and tugs him closer. Chanyeol pretends to be reluctant but thumbs soothe over his knuckles and that is all it takes for him to climb into bed.  
  
Baekhyun finds himself sitting in Chanyeol’s lap, blushing bright pink like the cherry blossoms blossoming in his husband’s hair, in which his eyes never leave the falling petals that fall onto the white sheets.  
  
“Hey, at least let me put some clothes on—”  
  
The human boy is cut off when Chanyeol suddenly cups the side of his face, waiting for him to look up so he can see the sincerity in his eyes, before he breathes out, “I-I… meant every word I said last night.”  
  
And Baekhyun looks up. He looks up to see the taller looking at him, and he sees the hues of pink and purple, a blur of colours, even midnight blues against the sun’s light that erupt into a burn against his almond eyes. They reflect his own. Behind his luminan eyes that are casted under a spell, behind soft, brown eyes that Chanyeol has yet to see, Baekhyun looks at him the same.  
  
“I am never letting you go, Byun Baekhyun."

 

 

~*~

 

 

“Some of us are very single here, writing their thousandth and fourth letter to a man who will never respond to me. I do not need my oldest brother and his husband stealing kisses in the early hours of the morning. We have yet to have breakfast, too.  
  
“You missed breakfast because you were writing another to Luhan.”  
  
“No one needed to know that, Jongin.”  
  
The young brothers quarrel, and Baekhyun blushes – he’s been doing too much of that lately. And it’s all because the king won’t stop pressing soft kisses against the smaller’s lips ever since he slipped into his royal robes while the Florenstines carefully placed the crown on top of his hair, making sure that it wouldn’t topple over because of the cherry blossoms scattered amongst the jewels.  
  
The buzz of the palace is loud as they climbed down the stairs and to the feasting hall for breakfast because the Luminans and the elders have woken up to cobbled pathways covered with baby blue cherry blossoms. The flowers are soft as the ones in the king’s hair. The Pixians talk with glee, even the mermaids who are barely awake, and the Florenstines are planting orange peonies in between the frames of the palace.  
  
The land’s people are just as warm hearted, like the year-long spring, because the king has fallen in love.  
  
They don’t miss the sight of flower buds blooming in Baekhyun’s artificial flower crown, encouraged to blossom from the way his wings flutter in contentment, something akin to bliss, and the ways his eyes seem to stare flustered every time Chanyeol would smile at him. Just like it would in a fairy tale. And sometimes there’s a hum, sometimes the smile is pressed against his mouth with a whisper of I love you, but it’s barely heard against the younger’s ears. He doesn’t hear it at all.  
  
Chanyeol still trails after Baekhyun, ignoring Jongin as he calls him a love sick puppy which has his younger brother sulking quietly. Sehun soon starts to tease, chortling here and running slow circles around Chanyeol, in which Jongin quickly joins in despite Kyungsoo staring at him unimpressed. They have barely stepped into the garden.  
  
The queen strolls behind them under an umbrella a florestine is holding up as they leave a trail of buttercups behind them on the grass for the soil to pick out new seedlings. They’re greeted by the gardeners, who bow at the family, smiles widening and hands clasped together. And sprouts blossom from the top of their heads when they noticed that the king’s wings are huge and fluttering for the first time in a century, a translucent black with darker linings around the edges, standing beautiful beside his red hair and the pink cherry blossoms.  
  
Because for the first time in years, he hasn’t hidden them against his shoulder blades, beneath his shirt and robes. Instead his robes have been discarded once he stepped outside, and the bangles that are tight around his biceps glisten through his loose, white shirt. His gold markings that circle his wrist and his neck are bold, too, and his eyes, no longer shuttered but now soft and hooded as Baekhyun absentmindedly takes his hand in his.  
  
“So beautiful.” Chanyeol murmurs to himself, his mind somewhere else other than his current surroundings and on the human, who has stopped swinging their hands together.  
  
“What?”  
  
“I mean this picnic basket!” the king laughs as he takes it from Kyungsoo’s hands, who has half the mind to tug it back from the taller but he lets go when the tall man throws him a tight-lipped smile, “what else could I possibly be talking about. Just look at the way it has been handwoven and painted a rich brown—”  
  
“I think I have lost my appetite,” Sehun quips up, snatching the basket from Chanyeol and shuffling around inside for a sandwich. Jongin needs in agreement, “definitely.”  
  
With a cliché checked blanket against cut grass where little daisies pop up around the settles, they settle under the sun and against a tree that mumbles out stories of the past of its days as a small root until the oranges grew and clung to it ever since. Baekhyun leans back against it and Chanyeol slides across to him. Looking around hurriedly, the king quickly takes the sandwich Jongin picked out from the basket and passes it the smaller, momentarily glaring at his brother before he’s grinning back down at Baekhyun. The younger prince stays staring at Chanyeol, mouth opened, before Kyungsoo uncovers a pastry and shoves it into his mouth.  
  
Baekhyun eats happily, cheeks round and filled with bread, and then he offers Chanyeol a bite of his sandwich, “Want some?”  
  
The king shakes his head no. Instead, he sits there, arms around his knees that are pulled up to his chest, and his crown slightly tilted and out of place against his smile – the dimple deeper than ever.  
  
“There’s strawberry pudding!”  
  
Chanyeol stumbled to the side as Baekhyun almost shrieks, the hold around his knees loosening and his head snaps up to meet Kyungsoo’s reassuring look. And then he’s staring back at Baekhyun, who uncovers the dessert with prying fingers, the taller tentative as he waits. The king is so focused on the human that he doesn’t realise his fiddling self has capture his mother’s attention along with his brothers. Three pairs of eyes stare speculative because the oldest son, a man who is diligent as they come, his deep, timbre voice barking out commands to his guards, a kind that reverberates of the palace walls and is heard in in the homes of Ignisilandia, is fidgeting.  
  
Sehun snorts when Chanyeol makes a sound between a disgruntled groan and a yelp.  
  
All three – four, because Chanyeol hasn’t taken his eyes off Baekhyun since they stepped into the garden – pairs of eyes watch in stupefied fascination as Baekhyun licks the pudding, only for it to be followed by a cute wrinkle of his nose as he looks up. They all look away.  
  
“Kyungsoo… did you make this?” Baekhyun asks cautiously, settling the spoon down on top of the pudding. Hiding his grimace with a small smile, the young lunar king looks at the chef questioningly, licking his lips as he does so, “does it not seem… a little undercooked?”  
  
Baekhyun misses the look of exaggerated anguish on Chanyeol’s face that has Jongin laughing heartedly into his hands.  
  
“I, um, my king, I may have made a mistake with the timing when I had put it into the oven—”  
  
Kyungsoo is cut off as Sehun starts talking around the strawberry in his mouth, “Nonsense. Our dear brother made it.”  
  
The king’s cheeks turn the same shade as the strawberries.  
  
“Chanyeol… made this?” Baekhyun asks, furrowing his eyebrows as his gaze falls between a haughty looking Sehun and Kyungsoo. The chef wrings the napkin against his torso, bowing ever so slightly to the blushing king. And he finally looks at Chanyeol. The man’s head is ducked down, blush stinging against his cheeks and his eyes are blinking down at nothing in particular but also at everything except Baekhyun.  
  
“He has gotten up earlier than usual today. I had the unpleasant sight of him attempting to put a strawberry pudding together in the main kitchen, that and in nothing but his panties. You may be fond of that, brother-in-law, but I certainly am not,” the youngest prince snickers while ignoring their mother’s warning, who thinks the couple are flustered enough to last them for the rest of the day, but he still pipes up, “he did not know where the sugar was so he had the Pixians pick the grains from the sylvates bushes. I do not think the mermaids were pleased about their bushes missing the sugar grains until they found it was due to the king’s doing.”  
  
“You talk too much,” Jongin interrupts, throwing a warm bun towards Sehun that hit him across the nose, “in short, brother here had baked strawberry pudding for you in just his briefs in the early hours of the morning. What a man you have right here, Baekhyun—”  
  
“Jongin.”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
The two brothers start bickering again as Jongin insists that Kyungsoo should side with him and Sehun whines at his mother. In the middle of it all, Baekhyun laughs lightly, and Chanyeol finally looks up at him as he nods his head absentmindedly. When a chuckle tickles against the taller’s mouth, Baekhyun finally turns around to look up at him with the corners of his lips pulled up and his crescents eyes, too, the two under the tree that watches them fondly.  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
Beautiful, Chanyeol thinks, even when he moves to wipe away the pudding at the corner of his husband’s lips, smile soft against the rough tip of his thumb.  
  
And the moon wakes up another twenty-three times, with twenty-two sunsets in between.  
  
The king continues to fall, just like the moon had for the sun, and so do the cherry blossom petals in his hair.  
  
He plucks at them – a habit – sitting on the edge of the fountain where he brings the little flowers to life, some crying in their small voices as they float across the water. Baekhyun stops planting the flowers around the edges of a hedge, one that makes up the centre of the maze, only to watch enthralled as his husband casts old spells here and there. Sometimes he does it with words, other times it would be with a simple movement of his hands while his gold markings glow. The soil still sticks to Baekhyun’s hands, the seeds in his palms forgotten when Chanyeol laughs at a baby flower stumbling over and onto his thigh.  
  
“He has been looking at you like that ever since you have gotten here, your highness.”  
  
The gentle knowing voice has Chanyeol looking away from the blooming flowers and scurrying up from his seat to bow at Yixing, who strides towards him from the other side of the fountain. The gardener’s hands are filled with newly grown flowers that don’t stop talking. He responds with a bow of his own before he’s clasping a hand on the young king’s shoulder, just like he had when the taller had been the crown prince following after his father’s footsteps to rule Ignisilandia.  
  
“Yixing!”  
  
“Chanyeol,” he greets, his dimple mirroring Chanyeol’s own as he places the flowers down onto the edge of the fountain where they tease the water lilies, “I go away for ninety-two nights and days and come back to hear that our king has gotten married. May I say I am a little disheartened that I did not hear of it on the day, but I apologise for not attending. Yifan had just gotten back from Lavendiestia and he could only stay for long. But enough of that. It seems like you have chosen a beautiful soul for your very troubled one.”  
  
Yixing finally glances over at Baekhyun, and Chanyeol follows, to find the younger man staring at them in curiosity before he’s trying to cover the fact that he was and walks right into a hedge. The human boy splutters, bowing in apology and fixing his gardening hat that almost covers his eyes, making him look like a scolded puppy rather than a lunar king. Chanyeol almost laughs at the sight but he bows back a little in return as his husband runs away to the other side of the fountain.  
  
“You seem to look at him the same way he does.”  
  
The king looks back at Yixing, smile still playing at his lips but he’s confused, “and in what way would that be?”  
  
“Like that, Chanyeol. Like he is in love with everything you do, and everything you are.”  
  
The older man expects it when the taller grows lost for words, smiling as Chanyeol opens and closes his mouth as if to ask the gardener to elaborate further, or to deny the assumption, but he doesn’t get to say much as Yixing hands him a flower. Buried only under cherry blossom trees and pampered with sunlight and lemon juice, blue crystal flowers only grow during the start of summer. They rarely live until the next spring but the gardener tends to them at home, along with flowers he had fused together. Chanyeol is left in awe.  
  
“Give this to our lunar king,” Yixing prompts him and Chanyeol takes it, smile grateful and fingers gentle, “may it be a gift from you.”  
  
The gardener soon leaves with his flowers in tow and the king bids him farewell before striding over to Baekhyun. The younger suddenly looks up at the sky, fawning over the clouds like he hadn’t been trying to listen in on their conversation. He hadn’t heard much for the flowers growing out of the hedges kept teasing him about his husband.  
  
“Here,” Chanyeol says after a while, twirling the stem of the flower between his fingers. The blue crystals shine under every angle of the sunlight, just like the light in Baekhyun’s eyes when he gasps at the sight of glowing, blue petals, “for you.”  
  
Slender fingers trace over the crystal linings, around the soft petals, and Baekhyun beams up at Chanyeol with the moon in his eyes. Crescent shaped, just like the six other moons that dance around Ignisilandia and the sixty-one islands. But much more beautiful, dancing with mirth instead and with something akin to pure adoration – Chanyeol doesn’t know it’s love yet.  
  
“Do you love flowers?” The king asks as he leans down and breaks Baekhyun out of his haze, smile wavering in nervousness before he picks it back up again.  
  
Baekhyun’s voice is quiet, but he nods firmly up at him, “very much so.”  
  
“Do you love me?”  
  
“Of course I do—”  
  
The blue crystal flower drops from Baekhyun’s hand just as his head snaps up to stare at Chanyeol in bewilderment. But he misunderstood the space between them, and so his nose bumps against the taller’s softly. Almond eyes stare back at him, looking into widened, droopy eyes with mirth. With something else.  
  
The flowers know that it’s love.  
  
And Baekhyun sees it, too, as Chanyeol leans down to kiss his husband ever so softly.

 

 

~*~

 

 

Black wings spread out against the silk bed, translucent against the white and the red is fanned out against the pillows, Chanyeol moves along with the kisses he places at the corner of Baekhyun’s mouth. He groans low in his throat when the smaller sinks deeper onto him, till his rim puckers at the base.

  
The younger starts driving the king insane, rolling his hips every time Chanyeol thrusts up into his heat, the base of the latter’s girth cold against the air with dry rose dew until Baekhyun falls back down. The slaps are in sync as they are. And Baekhyun takes a hold of the wooden poles of the headboard, urging the taller to go harder, deeper, as he buries his face into his husband’s shoulder when it becomes too much.  
  
“You put the stars to shame.”  
  
Baekhyun’s fingers are numb from where he holds on, pummelling back down while clenching tightly around Chanyeol as he brings himself back down. The taller’s face is flushed below him and his head is bowed down so he can take one of Baekhyun’s nubs into his hot mouth. The human boy mewls softly, mouth open and panting as his sticky skin moves against Chanyeol’s, from his hips to his hands that drop to hold onto the king’s shoulders tightly.  
  
With the fingers of one hand interlaced with Baekhyun’s, Chanyeol kneads the smaller’s pert ass with the other, pulling at the skin till it tightens around his member, and close as his fingers almost touch the stretched rim. He pulls them apart and pistons further into him.  
  
Chanyeol’s hips chase after Baekhyun’s, taking the latter by surprise that he’s dropping back down the same time the taller thrusts up. And so with his heads in the clouds, Baekhyun’s screams are muffled into the side of Chanyeol’s neck. The cries are horse and they crack as the older plants his feet against the bed with Baekhyun barely hanging onto him, and soon the top of his thighs slap against the curve of the smaller’s ass. He moves slowly against Baekhyun, in awe, as the human looks so beautiful above him, his mouth softly touching his, his head filled with thought of him. Only him.  
  
Then it’s in the way Chanyeol looks up at him, completely entranced with his cherry blossoms blooming in his hair, staring at him, unblinking, that has Baekhyun’s own eyes filling with tears. Lips form a silent plea of his name, and Baekhyun cries into Chanyeol’s mouth when the taller shuffles them around till he’s looking at him with wide, wet eyes. The king is gripping onto his husband’s thighs, his hips, and he goes to cup his face between his hands, pulling him closer than they were before. Because Chanyeol’s mind is filled with him, too.  
  
“I love you,” he says, voice hoarse, almond eyes wide and molten, “I love you, Baekhyun.”  
  
Baekhyun burns under his stare, under his words, a slow burn just like the slow rolls of his hips because he’s so close. So close. He’s unfocused, feeling the oranges and blues burning like flames inside, and the stars are dancing just like the gold lines on Chanyeol’s face. They brighten under Baekhyun’s fingertips. And they’re both dropping off the edge, filled with hot sparks of white and shy blues as Chanyeol kisses Baekhyun, who falls against him.  
  
Chanyeol laughs into the skin of Baekhyun’s bare shoulder as he wraps his arms around the smaller, manoeuvring him to lie on his back. But it’s soft when he laughs and it cracks a little when Baekhyun holds onto his hands. He rubs his thumb over the younger’s mouth when he notices him trying to fight against the slumber. Baekhyun’s eyes are heavy but bright while he watches Chanyeol silently, glancing everywhere, from the wrinkles at the sides of his almond eyes to the mole on his nose, to the dent of his dimple before he’s blinking up at the cherry blossoms that are so beautiful just like the man above him.  
  
He has never seen someone so beautiful.  
  
Someone so beautiful who is in love with him.  
  
Though his eyes flutter closed, his hands join Chanyeol’s in tracing over the curve of his body as he snuggles against the taller with his button nose pressed against his chest. Hushed whispers run along, and Chanyeol feels Baekhyun’s heart slowing down, but his one picks up when the latter sleepily turns to place a soft kiss against his bicep. It lingers but Baekhyun’s hold on him stays as the moon sings a lullaby outside, to the land, to the stars, and to the sun who can only hear her.  
  
“Chanyeol,” Baekhyun whispers, falling asleep, “I love you, too.”  
  
I love you.  
  
I love you.  
  
I love you.  
  
The lunar king gives into dreams, ones he had read about in fairy tales, unaware of the spell that he was held under for almost three hundred nights leaving his body as little sparks fall off his wings.  
  
It’s only Chanyeol who notices when a spark lands against his face, jolting him out of his blissful state and startling him further when Baekhyun’s wings beneath the sleeping boy starts glowing. The grey wings glow but they dim as the seconds go by. They burn low under Chanyeol’s eyes as the king sits there bewildered. Yet, he still moves to touch them, so he can hold them in between his fingertips, but they shatter beneath his touch and disappear into ashes and onto the bed sheets.  
  
“Baekhyun—”  
  
The freckles start fading, dots disappearing one by one till Baekhyun is left with a constellations of moles on his face. He’s still so beautiful, Chanyeol thinks but his thoughts are running around wildly as balls of light rub off the markings on Baekhyun’s face. The younger sleeps through it all. He sleeps as the pinch of his ears give away, as does the button nose that is still round and a little upturned but not shaped like the Luminans have. He sleeps through it all, even when Chanyeol pulls himself up onto his arms to get a better look at the boy beneath him, familiar but someone the king can’t seem to recognise.  
  
“Baekhyun—”  
  
And Chanyeol remembers. Of course he does. These people have roamed his land before, the last one seen a century ago before they were banished from Ignisilandia under the king’s orders. It was before the books were stored away, torn or burnt in a fire that took place behind the palace. Only a few had been saved, stored away in the homes of some Luminans, but it was a secret to the king that this is how some people were able to enter the human world. These people had come to his land through fairy tales of their own, falling in love with Luminans and Florenstines alike.  
  
Of course he remembers.  
  
One had fallen for him.  
  
Or so he thought.  
  
Baekhyun rolls over in his sleep and Chanyeol flinches back without thinking. His embers start to glow as he watches the way Baekhyun’s lips pinch into a frown when he doesn’t feel the warmth of his husband beside him but he tucks his hand back under a pillow and smiles in his sleep. The king scrambles out of bed just as he had flinched away. He’s completely horrified at the scene before him, at the thought of not noticing a spell all this time until it’s starting to wear away. He pulls back like he’s been burnt, and the thoughts run around relentlessly now, followed by a buzzing sound in his ears as he watches the human boy sleep in his bed.  
  
Baekhyun’s a human.  
  
_And you are in love with him._  
  
No one hears the king stumbling into his bedside table as he hastily slips into his robes while his eyes stay narrowed at the sleeping human. The cherry blossoms fall in heaps without being plucked, crying as they feel the king’s tirade of emotions that make him feel stick to the stomach. The flowers keep blossoming, but they fall without being plucked. So he does the only thing he can think of with his heart sinking, angry at his husband, angry at himself, and that is to run out of his room without a word.  
  
The moon stops singing, and Chanyeol is lost.

 

 

~*~

 

 

The sun doesn’t smile the next morning.  
  
“Have you seen your brother?”  
  
Baekhyun stops Jongin in the middle of the way, who is munching on bread he probably stole from the kitchen pantry, but he receives a distracted shake of his head. The smaller shrugs at his behaviour and turns around to head off into the main hall when Jongin comes running back, having barely made it past the corner and into the other hall. The younger prince stares baffled, his eyes roaming every feature of Baekhyun’s face, and brown eyes look back at him questioningly.  
  
Jongin’s gaze falls to his nose, one that is a little round and a little upturned but not button shaped like it had been just yesterday morning, and neither are there freckles dotting along the expanse of his nose and cheeks. The only thing Jongin seems to recognise are the droopy shaped eyes that now blink up at him in confusion. With features much bolder than Kyungsoo’s when he loses his luminan blood once he steps into Earth, Jongin gasps.  
  
Just like a human.  
  
“Baekhyun…”  
  
The lunar king frowns at his name, “are you okay, Jongin?”  
  
“I, uh… I just… I—I think he is in his office. The, um, spell ball is coming up in a few moons time. He’s probably testing out the new arrivals and will probably be very busy with a number of them, so I would not interrupt him if I were you—”  
  
But Baekhyun hurries back with a thank you and a bright smile, his robes flying behind him, and Jongin’s mind only catches up when his brother-in-law has already rounded four corners of the palace hallways. He’s at the royal office before the maids can stop him. And it’s why he doesn’t notice the surprised looks from the Luminans, the same one Jongin gave him, and neither does he notice the Florenstines gasping at his appearance.  
  
The human boy opens the double doors just as Chanyeol slams his palms against the table, anguish written on his face which crumbles once he sees his husband standing by the foot of the table. Baekhyun’s smile becomes uneasy as the taller’s expression grows unreadable, his bright eyes dimming while he inspects the smaller intensely. Baekhyun’s heart beats once, twice, a dull thud, when Chanyeol flashes him a smile. It’s forced, he knows. It should be endearing, he also adds, watching the king as he saunters closer towards him, ready to take his hands in between his calloused ones. But it’s not because he doesn’t hold them gently like he does.  
  
“Did you sleep well, Baekhyun?”  
  
The younger blanches, and he looks down at their hands before he’s staring up into almond eyes, “I… you weren’t there when I woke up.”  
  
Chanyeol shrugs, not quite meeting his eyes, “I had plans to prepare for the spell ball.”  
  
“I trapped my fingers in the bedside table’s drawer.”  
  
Baekhyun doesn’t know why he says it – it didn’t hurt as much when he bumped into it – but he pauses and notices the way Chanyeol’s smile slips off his face. His own slips off when the taller soothes his fingers over his knuckles a little too hard, glancing down briefly to see if there are any bruises marring his skin, “not that it matters because my husband doesn’t seem to be happy.”  
  
Chanyeol abruptly lets go off Baekhyun’s hands, and his lips are taught when he smiles, “who says I am not happy?”  
  
“Why are you lying?”  
  
“Is that so?”  
  
“What? What was that?”  
  
Chanyeol heaves a sigh and he steps back to thread his fingers through his already tousled hair. Baekhyun doesn’t focus on the shaking of his hands, neither does he show his worry, but he notices that the cherry blossoms have disappeared. Instead, his hair is a darker shade of red that it had been last night and Baekhyun’s not sure where the flowers have gone.  
  
“Nothing. I did not say anything. I am just stressing over my duties.”  
  
“Are you, perhaps, angry at me?” Baekhyun asks once Chanyeol turns around and gives him his back, tensing soon after the younger’s question.  
  
“What gave you such an idea?” The king responds, his voice clipped and rough, tired, “Unless you have done something that would upset me. Is there anything… you have done to upset me, Baekhyun?”  
  
He’s conflicted with ruined images of Baekhyun’s beautiful face, of eyes that would look up him in crescents or would flutter when his cheeks burned too strongly, and he’d feel a rectangular smile against his mouth when Baekhyun would laugh into the kiss. But it’s all a lie because he’s left with brown eyes he’s sure are looking up at him in uncertainty, lost just as he is. And he doesn’t have any right to look so lost, not when Chanyeol must be on the end of some kind of game of love and loss only humans know how to play.  
  
Chanyeol pulls away harshly when Baekhyun reaches out for him.  
  
He hates how his heart is still frantic inside of him.  
  
“When were you going to tell me you are human?!”  
  
Spells quieten down inside the glass cases, jolting in their cage at the king’s deep, angered voice. They look on as Baekhyun stumbles backwards because Chanyeol looks so frustrated, so enraged, and completely lost with his eyes burning like the fires in his hair. He looks lost. But so is Baekhyun as the king stalks towards him and grabs him by the arm, earning a strangled yelp when nimble fingers dig into his robe covered skin.  
  
“Chanyeol—”  
  
“A human,” he whispers, breathing shallow and heavy, and eyes red as he thinks because this can’t be true, “I married a human.”  
  
“You weren’t meant to find out like this,” Baekhyun struggles to say against the lump in his throat, reaching for his husband again, only to be pushed away, “please let me explain—”  
  
“W-What is there to explain? You are one of them.”  
  
The human’s whisper almost goes unheard, nothing thinking at all in spite of all the golden hues, of the pinks and the purples of Chanyeol blurring into a burn. He refuses to look up at the king’s harsh stare because he can feel it burning into his skin just like the embers would do. But he talks despite Chanyeol’s anger, “one that you have fallen for.”  
  
“I can fall out of love just as easily,” the taller is speaking nonsense, but all he sees is Baekhyun looking away from him – please do not do that, “what would a human know about love? Especially one who claims to love me, who has deceived me for more than two-hundred and eighty-one nights. You must be thrilled in fact, huh, Baekhyun. You have a king who is at your feet!”  
  
“It isn’t like that!”  
  
“Then what is it like?!” Chanyeol seethes, voice broken, chipping away, but it stays strong unlike Baekhyun’s, “do you know how pathetic you seem right now?”  
  
It’s suffocating and it’s smothering him but Baekhyun chooses to stay quiet, even though the heavy burn of his heart and his tears grow to become too overbearing. Because now his husband is looking down at him like he can’t stand the sight of him, as if he hadn’t been looking at him with all the love of the moons since he took his first kiss. Like the first they met. Like a fairy tale that never existed for the king.  
  
“Did you—then do you not love me,” Baekhyun almost cries when Chanyeol looks away, “anymore?”  
  
“I do not think I can.”  
  
The human boy staggers away, his hip knocking against the edge of the table as it turns the sob to leave his mouth louder. His hands quickly run up to cover his mouth. But his cries are hoarse and clear, and his fingers are numb from where they’re pressed into his eyes to stop the awful stinging of his tears, so Chanyeol can’t see them. Yet, even with the bottom of his palms covering his brown eyes, the king can still the tremble of his lips beneath his teeth as he tries to will his cries away. Chanyeol still calls for him, but Baekhyun shakes his head and rips his wrist out of his husband’s hold, stumbling away from him.  
  
The king ignores the horrible tightening of his chest at the broken sight, and he ignores the spells urging him to take it all back. The taller man simply blinks his reddening eyes and looks down at the floor.  
  
“I have told y-you I love you.”  
  
“Do not say things you do not understand.”  
  
“When I have never said those words to another soul. Not even to my parents, not to my best friend, who had warned me not to fall in love with you. I told him I wouldn’t but I did just that. That is how much I love you—”  
  
Baekhyun’s confession lightens a fire in his heart, blinding the ache inside his chest as his husband tries to speak softly through his broken sobs. It has the human basking against the blues and the whites, like the skies, colour hues Chanyeol has seen ever since he fell, but they’re brighter than ever and the king doesn’t understand.  
  
“You do not—”  
  
“I love you! I love you! I love you!” Baekhyun cries out but his eyes are harsh when he narrows them at his husband, “What more do you want, Park Chanyeol?”  
  
He doesn’t answer as he grabs the smaller by the wrist once again, pulling him towards the double doors and pushing it open. Baekhyun is tugged along as he trips up on his own robes, and Chanyeol is trying to drown out his cries with his own laboured breathing. He doesn’t listen to the Florenstines either, or the Luminans who please for their king to calm down, all distraught at the sight of their lunar king crying. They have no clue as to why such a thing is happening. Or maybe they do, and maybe they have known all along like the moon.  
  
Chanyeol pulls him through to the royal hall where the door is left open as the florenstine scurry out. He strolls in with Baekhyun and startles his mother, who was in the middle of scolding her younger sons. And the human cries are quiet but deafeningly loud against the quiet room; the boy looks helpless as he gasps for breaths, but even so, he doesn’t fight roughly against the taller’s hold. He chooses not to. He only pleads for him to listen.  
  
The pleas stop as soon as the former queen stands up from her throne, hurrying over to the two when the smaller’s cries grow alarming, a sight she never thought she’d see.  
  
“What is going on?!”  
  
His mother’s shoulders are a muffling sound in his ears as she warns him to let Baekhyun go, to release his unforgiving grip, but the smaller still falls into her arms in a mess. It’s only then she notices his lack of wings that would greet her every time with a flutter.  
  
Chanyeol stares at the scene with disbelief, his posture crumbling even if only for a second before he’s throwing his head back and laughing. He laughs humourlessly, swiping the back of his hand against his mouth as he ignores the incredulous stares his brothers send him, as if this would stop him from breaking down. Even when he looks at Baekhyun, who hides his face into the former queen’s shoulder, away from the king’s sight, Chanyeol clicks his tongue.  
  
“What has gotten into you?” his mother reprimands with her calm expression no longer intact while she runs her fingers through Baekhyun’s hair, feeling him quiver in her arms when she speaks loud and clear for Chanyeol to hear, “I… I… what could have possibly had you two fighting to this extent? Do you not see the state you have left Baekhyun in, my son? The Luminans have weak hearts. You cannot go around upsetting your husband like this.”  
  
“Luminan?” the word is taunting, said through gritted teeth that has the younger king flinching but it draws out looks of puzzlement from his brothers as Chanyeol finally stops pacing around, “are Luminans are as pathetic as he is right now?”  
  
“Chanyeol!”  
  
“Of course not,” he yells back, “only a human know how to be this pathetic.”  
  
“What are you babbling about?”  
  
“He is human!” Chanyeol finally snaps. He frightens the Florenstines with his embers that fall to the floor and pop into balls of sparks, dusting of fire burning at his own skin. And he ignores the way his heart seems to ache so awfully when Baekhyun flinches, but the words are running out of his mouth, “he—he is human. And all this time, I had told you- I had told each and every one of you. His manners are the same, the way he speaks, the way- the way he marvels at everything and anything—”  
  
“Is that all?” Sehun cuts in, and he knows he shouldn’t be so careless with his words, not when his brother holds the temper of a thousand unspoken words, certainly not when there are stories of his brother he has yet to believe.  
  
“Is that all? He lied to me; he lied to us. He was living amongst royalty, deceiving the moon by pretending to be a luminan. He told us he had lost the way in creating spells when, in fact, he could not cast them even if he tried! Yet, here he is as a lunar king. A human. Should that not be enough, Sehun?”  
  
“So what if he is human, brother? You do not hate them. I know you do not. When will you be rid of this pretence that you do? You can send Baekhyun off to Earth. Send him back home if you feel so deceived. But you will not, because knowing you, you will not have the heart to send him back home. Because you have long accepted humans, Chanyeol. Do not make things more difficult than they should be.” The youngest prince warns. He waves away Jongin’s terrified look because it had to be said. Their brother wouldn’t be foolish enough to fight the fates, nor the love he knows the moon had brought for the broken king.  
  
“As long as I rule, it is my law. And my law does not accept humans in any way,” Chanyeol spits out, “If you do not understand me then the elders will know about this.”  
  
“You are being irrational!”  
  
Sehun’s voice is gruff under a tone he has never used with his older brother but the palace is already running amuck. The florestines are weeping while planting new roses on top of the chandeliers as their lunar king does, wiping them only for them to fall upon the petals. The Luminans outside have yet to know, but they sense the sun dimming above; the palace wouldn’t allow it. And Baekhyun stands behind the queen from where she had ushered him to stay, refusing to look up at Chanyeol or anyone else.  
  
“What fucking part of he is human do you not understand?!” The king yells, his voice rough and low like his embers that fall as sharp crystals rather than sparks onto his throne.  
  
“What part of he is fated to you – he is your husband – do you not understand, brother?”  
  
Jongin flinches when his older brother throws his crown against the wall, with his lips parted wanting to speak but knowing Chanyeol will not listen to anyone, or anything. He won’t listen to the moon at this point. Neither will he listen to their mother, who stands still, tight-lipped and stoic. No one besides herself knows of the burn that rises up in her throat because all of this was written by the fates. Untold to Chanyeol. She knew of the heartbreak her son would receive.  
  
She knew of the first one before Baekhyun.  
  
“I had sworn to myself I would never fall for one, not… not after him. Never for those filthy creatures who leave when it is the most convenient. They leave things unfinished because that is all they are capable of,” Chanyeol’s words are no longer heavy, but they come out harshly in stutters, “I should have known. I should have known from all the times he had defended them. He was one of them all this time.”  
  
And the world seems to give away beneath Chanyeol’s feet as well as Baekhyun’s with a few simple words that have their aching hearts halting, “we knew.”  
  
The stinging is unbearable.  
  
“You knew?”  
  
“The signs were there, Chanyeol! Sehun raises his voice, frustrated that his brother had been so oblivious – so oblivious about someone he loves, “his wings did not twitch, only when he willed them to. You said it yourself. It was not Earthling habit he had picked up, but they were habit he had grown up with as a human. Because that is what he is, brother! Baekhyun is human! But that does not change anything—”  
  
“You knew,” Chanyeol repeats slowly, just like his eyes darkening under the fluorescent lights of the hall. Slow as if he’s warning is brother to take back his words, “you knew and you did not tell me.”  
  
“It was not in our place to tell.”  
  
It’s all a blurry mess to Chanyeol’s eyes, blinded by selfishness and tears, with a sharp intake of breath that follows alongside an ache as it starts to suffocate him. It’s too much when he hears the soft cries Baekhyun tries to muffle into the sleeves of his own robes. He refuses to acknowledge his husband. And his next set of words are said without a single cherry blossom in sight.  
  
“Byun Baekhyun will stay in the dead labyrinth—”  
  
“Are you insane—”  
  
“He will stay in the dead labyrinth, and none of you are to attempt to contact him until he is released. That is an order from the king.”  
  
The guards move despite their former queen standing in front of Baekhyun, against Sehun as he tries to reassure his brother-in-law that he’ll be okay, all under the king’s commands. They’re only able to look at their lunar king with unshed tears as he pleads them to let him speak to Chanyeol one more time. But Baekhyun doesn’t fight. He doesn’t have it in himself, even when the former queen refuses to let go off his hands. Yet, it’s when he spots Kyungsoo crying into Jongin’s hands, the smaller luminan’s heart aching for his friend as he shouts at his lover to stop his brother from being so cruel, that has Baekhyun sobbing.  
  
“Baekhyun…”  
  
“He does not love me, your highness,” he cries, shaking his head as he encourages the former queen to let go, “there is nothing I can do.”  
  
The guards soon leave and so Baekhyun, but Chanyeol has yet to look at the door. He stands by his throne where petals of cherry blossoms sit on the seat. With his back to his mother, to his brothers, and the Florenstines, he has the sleeves of his royal robes against his mouth to stop the unrelenting ache in his throat. No one sees the tremble of his lips, or the cry that leaves his mouth.  
  
The hall remains silent before the youngest prince speaks up.  
  
“You fell in love with a human, Chanyeol. But most of all, you have fallen for Baekhyun,” Sehun’s voice is quiet, disappointed as he casts his brother one more glance while leaving the royal hall, “if you see that as something terrible, were you ever in love with him at all?”  
  
Chanyeol stays numb.  
  
“The upsetting thing is that… his love seems to be unconditional. And I hate to say that I cannot say the same for yours. He is not him, Chanyeol. He is Baekhyun, so let your heart go for once.”

 

 

~*~

 

 

The dead labyrinth – a place acres behind the palace where prisoners are left to die amongst flowers that have become weeds or poisoned. It’s bleak and grey, and avoid of any colours since the sun refuses to shed their light on the chipped stones and broken statues. The pathways are deep, too, so the sun can’t find his way through.  
  
The stone walls mirror the garden maze nearer to the palace, but it’s more complex than the one Baekhyun is used to, the palace he’s no longer allowed to plant flowers around or to talk to the baby water littles in the fountain. There isn’t any way out.  
  
The human boy is huddled against one of the walls, shivering in just a loose shirt and tight trousers and fiddling with his fingers as he waits for something – someone. And the moon is soon arriving – that’s how long he’s been here – when he hears a pair of footsteps hurrying towards him. Then comes black starlets peeking out from behind a cracked statue.  
  
“Sehun!”  
  
The youngest prince rushes to the lunar king and quickly helps him up by the hands, holding him tightly to his side as he ushers the both of them out of the labyrinth and onto the plain field that stands behind the palace’s garden. And Baekhyun wants to ask how he was able to come here, that there’s no possible way of getting out because he’s been trying and failing countless amount of times, but Sehun just stares at him tight-lipped. He stays quiet as they walks towards a gloomy tree. Baekhyun fingers are still gripping onto Sehun’s red robes from where he held on as soon as he saw the younger prince.  
  
“You—you should not be here. Your brother had told you not to speak to me—”  
  
“Even after sending of you to the dead labyrinth, you are defending his selfish acts. Amazing, my dear brother-in-law.”  
  
Baekhyun forgets his words and stares blankly up at Sehun, who doesn’t look the least bit amused at either his brother’s antics or at the human’s words. He soon sighs deeply and steps forward to pat Baekhyun on the head, ruffling up his already messy hair in the process. But the youngest brother’s eyes soft, fond and sorrowful at the sight of Baekhyun’s dry eyes, of droopy eyes that would lighten up whenever someone spoke. And they still do, slightly, because he’s still in love with the king, even after the man had broken his heart.  
  
“Oh, what has my brother done to you.”  
  
Baekhyun looks away too quickly, “what are you doing here, Sehun?”  
  
It’s as if the younger suddenly remembers that he’s here for another reason than setting Baekhyun free, because he knows his older brother will hoard himself in his room until the elders ask of his presence at court. Sehun clicks his fingers after some thoughts and grins down at Baekhyun unabashedly.  
  
“I have a surprise for you!”  
  
He doesn’t have the time to ask before the tree is groaning at the sound of an ear splitting scream from behind the other side of the dead labyrinth. He even winces himself, as does Sehun, albeit the youngest prince looking over fondly behind Baekhyun when the scream grows louder, octaves higher than it was before.  
  
Baekhyun blinks once, a couple more times, and he’s rubbing at his eyes because there’s Luhan running towards him in his luminan form with his arms flailing above his head and his hair coloured brighter than it was before. Sehun steps forward, only to be pushed aside. And then the doe eyed man is sending Baekhyun to the floor as he pounces on the human boy, flinging his arms around him and holding onto the younger in a tight hug.  
  
“I had just finished Sehun’s thousandth and fourteenth letter before I heard of what the king has done,” Luhan shares the same look everyone else had, one of fondness and care. But Baekhyun still loses the shape of his smile before he’s pretending again when the luminan holds his hands, “I’m so sorry, Baek.”  
  
“It’s in the fates, isn’t it,” the smaller’s voice is faint, however, he tries covering it cough, “it was meant to happen.”  
  
“…then it would be okay if I told you I have the book?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I found it in Tabethinda, the furthest island from Ignisilandia. That is why I took so long. But the pages are all intact and the portal will open once the fifth pink moon comes around. That’s in two weeks, Baek. The next one after that is in four years. It is your choice whether you want to go or not – if you have something to stay for,” Luhan asks, undecidedly. He steals a glance at Sehun, who nods at him reassuringly to carry on, “you know I will come home with you if you want me to.”  
  
It’s then when Baekhyun’s shoulder sags, his face paling but his hands held tightly against his back so he doesn’t have to acknowledge the tremble of it. Because for long, for the past two-hundred or so nights, Baekhyun thought he knew what home was. Now he’s not so sure.  
  
“I… I… w-what do we—what would we do for the next two weeks?”  
  
“You will come home with me here. Sehun has made sure to cast a spell on the house so none of… king Chanyeol’s guards can see it if they wish to look for you during those couple of weeks. They are bound to notice you missing from the labyrinth. But it’s only two weeks, Baekhyun, and then… and then we’ll be home, where time has stopped and is waiting for us to get back.”  
  
“That’s… it?”  
  
“That’s it. They will only remember you through their fairytales.”  
  
The palace stands tall behind them as Sehun offers to escort them home, dull without the florestines planting flowers against the lights, without the maids and servants finding someone to tease, someone who would easily blush with the call of his husband’s name. And the prince and luminan can see Baekhyun faltering, taking a step towards the palace before he’s shaking his head and suppressing a sob.  
  
This can’t be home.  
  
A place where the head chef with his heart shaped smile, one Jongin would always trail after like he’s fallen in love with the first time, had found a friend in a young, human boy. And a former queen, who had finally found her son’s happiness. Someone who had ruled a thousand years before she passed her husband’s crown onto her a son, the boy having lost his beautiful, pink baby’s breath and found cherry blossoms a century after.  
  
And he’s leaving his king, his husband, who sits hiding behind the closed doors of his room, the cherry blossoms wilting in his hair that has turned black.  
  
“You… really did fall in love, huh.”

 

 

~*~

 

 

“But you love dumplings!”

  
Luhan yells after Baekhyun as he drops his food onto his bed to rush after the younger boy and into the bathroom, where sounds of dry heaving has the doe eyed man covering his ears at the distasteful sounds. It doesn’t stop and the minutes grow endless before Luhan picks himself up from the entrance of the bathroom to check up on his best friend, feet scurrying against his floorboards when the worry starts to take a toll on him.  
  
“Baek, you okay?” He asks while crouching down to rub soothing circles on the smaller’s back. He receives a cry in response from where Baekhyun feels the pain in his throat, his body lurching every time he catches a nauseating scent.  
  
“I probably ate something really bad, Lu. It’s probably the food I ate at the palace; I don’t think I’ve grown used to it all this time.”  
  
“But… but the mere smell of my dumplings had you running. When you love my recipe, Baekhyun… but… but—lift up your shirt.”  
  
“What?”  
  
Baekhyun moves to the sink once the retched feeling in his stomach starts disappearing, only a little, the smell of dumplings he used to eat almost every weekend after hours at the studio still a little nauseating. It’s enough for the human to pick himself to wash his mouth as the little bulbs hover around him to give him light. He only throws a questioning glance over his shoulder at Luhan, voice a little gruff, “you can’t look through my skin and to my internal organs. Or can you? Wow, Luminans are really advanced—”  
  
“No, you idiot,” Luhan sticks close to his side, even as Baekhyun pushes him away by the face and gives him a displeased look. But the older asks without hesitation, “you had sex with the king, right? Of course you have. My best friend’s lost his innocence to the king.”  
  
Baekhyun splutters, his words stuttering just as his heart is doing at the mention of the tall king, “What—what does that have to do with anything.”  
  
“Just lift up your stupid shirt!”  
  
“Fine, fine!” The human boy yells back, huffing as he goes to pull the hem of his shirt up to the end of his ribs. The huff is soon cut short by a gasp, his gasp, Luhan’s gasp – he isn’t sure – but there are three purple, cherry blossoms at the bottom of his stomach. They weren’t there before. Yet they’re etched onto his skin, like it had been tattooed on and lined with fine gold.  
  
They glimmer under his fingers, sparkling till they turn dull, and it doesn’t rub off when he places a little pressure against them with his fingertips.  
  
Baekhyun tries shaking away the thoughts but his mind is suddenly filed with images of a baby with a smile that’s rectangular and bright, but with her as red as roses. Toddling through the hallways of a place and leaving a trail of cherry blossoms behind, he finds himself following until they both topple against a tall man, who looks down at them with loving, almond eyes. His own pair are unfocused when he finds Luhan looking at him with an unreadable expression, yet his fingers are pulling at the younger’s cheeks.  
  
“You’re not having a baby.”  
  
Baekhyun scolds himself and at the heavy leap of his heart.  
  
“You’re having babies! Plural! Three of them!”  
  
Triplets.  
  
The three purple cherry blossoms are triplets.  
  
He has triplets.  
  
Luhan’s screams are thudding and unclear, like a heartbeat trapped inside drums, while Baekhyun stares at him as if he’s grown three heads.  
  
His fingers stay tight against the three markings of his stomach, tracing over the little bumps of the flower petals. Then there are sudden tears pricking at his eyes, and he’s laughing with sobs, and Luhan is laughing, too, holding onto his friend’s hands before he’s pulling him into a hug. His cries are still hoarse, blubbering almost as he wets Luhan’s t-shirt because he doesn’t quite know how to feel.  
  
And then he sees himself in the mirror. Baekhyun notices the dried tear tracks from all the tears he has cried during the past two weeks. He sees a Baekhyun who still looks so broken despite the new evidential glow to his cheeks, to his face, weaving into his hair like the flowers would, but still so different and one he doesn’t know. The warm feeling disappears and a bucket of cold water is poured over the elated feelings he had bubbling inside of him, at the thought of three little beans growing inside him. Because of him and Chanyeol.  
  
“What on Earth do I do?!”  
  
Baekhyun starts to shake his head, breaths coming out short. Luhan tries calming him down as he sits him on top of the covered toilet seat.  
  
“Lu… I—I can’t. You know I can’t.” he doesn’t mean to shrug off the other’s hand from his shoulder, his own hand wiping over his mouth harshly, but he feels Luhan’s hands against his knees.  
  
“Baek, breathe—”  
  
“He doesn’t love me, Lu! He… he doesn’t.”  
  
And that’s all he says before walking out of the bathroom and climbing into the spare bed, like nothing happened. The older boy follows soon after and he whispers his name but doesn’t get a hum in response. But with the slight tremble of the blankets above Baekhyun, Luhan knows his best friend is slowly breaking apart all over again, even though he has a reason not to. The three purple cherry blossoms are the only things that have him patting against the dull thuds of his heart, like he’s only scolding it.  
  
_I’ll be okay for you._  
  
“Luhan…”  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“Thank you… thank you for coming back home with me tomorrow.”  
  
_Let’s go home, little peas._

 

 

~*~

 

 

“Are you sure?”

  
“I’m sure?”  
  
“Are you positive?”  
  
“We kind of clarified that yesterday, Lu.” Baekhyun teases, gesturing towards his stomach and earning an unflattering smile from his friend.  
  
“You know we may never find the book again, not for a while at least once we enter Earth. You… you’ve been in Ignisilandia for a long time that you’ll miss it. You might deny it, Baek, but you’ll certainly miss it.” _And you’ll miss him._  
  
“We’re going home.”  
  
“Was it really ever home, Baekhyun?”  
  
Only the trees human the questions. The very two trees the human had seen when he first entered Ignisilandia. This time he’s smiling up at them, twinkling laughter following when they simply huff at him and turn their trunks around. The grudge doesn’t last too long and they’re ruffling his hair with their branches, lingering a little longer as they stare down at their lunar king. The human who brought peace to their kingdom, although he has tripped up on almost every root and still has yet to grow a seedling. But he was the lunar king whom their king had fallen in love with, just like the moon had fallen for the sun.  
  
“You will visit us, right? Maybe not in this lifetime and maybe in a different universe, but you make sure to drop by just to say hello. Maybe one day, we will get to see your three little beans, and until then we can only ask for the skies to let you join out universe again. Until that day, we will keep asking.”  
  
“Maybe one day,” Baekhyun says softly, taking the tips of their branches in his hands. He shouts a quiet reply to Luhan, who has the book open on the page they had left it open on – just a little after the king falls for the human in their fairytale - and turns back to the trees, “you two behave, okay? I do not want to return to you two bickering again.”  
  
“As you wish, our dear lunar king.”  
  
Each page turns a pale gold with little sparks that are the colour of red leaving the ripped pages, stinging against their skin. The letters of the love story starts shining and cherry blossoms fall into heaps by Baekhyun’s feet as he stares in wonder. As it happens all over again. The sparks don’t leave behind red blotches on unblemished skin this time, only soft white cherry blossoms kiss at their palms. And with every shot of light that bursts through every ruined page, Baekhyun almost steps away and towards the palace, but he’s suddenly opening his eyes to blinding light.  
  
He leaves Ignisilandia, never to return to it again.  
  
Only when the king brings you back.

 

 

~*~

 

 

“You can go through the portal anytime.”

  
Chanyeol halts in his walk to throw a glare towards Sehun. The brothers walk beside each other in the courtyard with Jongin following a step behind them. He keeps mum and listens attentively to his oldest and younger brother, waving every once in a while to the winter mermaids with a smile as they stroll past.  
  
Spring is no longer here, the orange hues of the days had only lasted two-hundred days before the snow fell from the purple skies, sometimes making the baby blue cherry blossoms appear lifeless. It’s beautiful but the flowers are dying. The fireflies still buzz and the tress still swat them away with their branches, but they light up the land where the moon fails to do so as she speaks to no one. Just like the king. They twinkle like faint streetlights, like the stars would, but the king is too caught up with his broken heart to listen.  
  
“This is the longest your hair has remained black,” Sehun reminds him, walking ahead, leather shoes slipping against the snow, “you are only doing this to yourself, brother.”  
  
“I do not know what you are talking about, Sehun.”  
  
“You miss Baekhyun! That is what I am talking about!” the youngest snaps, only to scoff when Chanyeol stares at him expressionless as he has been doing for the past thirty days. And if his hair had not turned black and the flowers in his hair didn’t wilt, stealing it of its emotions, Sehun would have been sure that red embers would be flying off his brother’s hair.  
  
His continues on bluntly, “your spells do not work because you do not try anymore. Ever since the Luminans let us know that Baekhyun has returned back to the human world, we no longer know who you are anymore. You are neither angry nor thrilled, like a limp tree that is ruling our kingdom. All because you miss Baekhyun.”  
  
“Sehun…” Jongin finally speaks up, asking his younger brother to just let it go but he doesn’t listen.  
  
“When will you just face the fact that you have fallen for a human and that you are still in love with him, huh, Chanyeol—”  
  
“So what if I have?!” the king shouts, “After everything I have put him through, do you think he will return to Ignisilandia with me if I chase after him to Earth. It… it is not that easy, Sehun.”  
  
Jongin excuses himself into the warmth of the palace where the Florenstines are huddled together, trying to keep the remaining flowers alive as soon as Chanyeol halts at the steps. Because his brother isn’t listening to the cries of the baby flowers, especially those that aren’t used to winter, and they need all the magic they can get. Some huddle up to the ones that have blossomed beautifully but there are ones that wither away in a flower crown that hasn’t been worn in a month.  
  
Sehun soon walks after Jongin, but he’s hoping their older brother will at least listen to what he has to say, “Ask the trees about Baekhyun. That is the very least you can do.”  
  
Chanyeol doesn’t understand why he listens to his youngest brother – he hasn’t been listening to the moon either – but he finds himself strolling against a line of tree until he reaches two that are not sleeping. With the mermaids asleep and the fountain statues still as they cover their faces with their hands, the two trees lean against each other and talk about everything and anything. Their branches are covered in droplets of now, their leaves crisp and ready to fall. They’re too busy plucking at their frozen leaves at the tips of their branches for them to notice their king until he stands before them and clears his throat.  
  
They scurry to stand up and their trunks bend with them as they bow deeply, mumbling profusely at one another.  
  
“King Chanyeol, what can we do for you?”  
  
Chanyeol has half the mind to say nothing and turn around to head inside the castle, but the trees know something about Baekhyun and his heart is restless to know.  
  
“Sehun tells me you know something of… Baekhyun. He thought I should ask.”  
  
“But, your highness,” one of the trees start uncertainly, branches clasping together as they think of their words carefully, “you do not love our lunar king. Why would you ask of news about him? Is he not a mere character in your fate?”  
  
“Did you not tell him you do not love him anymore…”  
  
And Chanyeol wants to say no, no, I love him. I love him like the moon loves the sun; I love him more than I have ever shown him. I love him so much that I will give up everything for him, only him. It is only ever him. Because it’s the sight of droopy eyes that shimmered up at him, even when they were coloured brown and confused, always turning into beautiful crescents. It’s of rectangular smiles he felt against his lips when he would kiss him softly with a laugh. It’s of someone who made him laugh like he had no worries in the world. It’s of Baekhyun, whom he fell so hopelessly in love with.  
  
“Unless,” the other tree starts, and their smile is shaky against the winter cold “you are still in love with him. The moon knows you never fell out of love; you were simply denying it.”  
  
“Even when you found he is human… you were still in love with him.”  
  
“And he still loved you then.”  
  
For the first time in forever, for one human being who had left with all the flowers in his world, Chanyeol laughs up into the sky. He laughs till his sides ache, till his throat closes up and his breath is frost as it dwindles down into a sob. His lips tremble under his cries, loud and unsteady, crying into his hands and torn as he falls to his knees with his robes falling against the snow. He’s lost. And it’s heart wrenching, broken and muffled into his palms where he says sorry to the person he let go. The flowers die while their king cries.  
  
The land’s people hear it within the homes, and Jongin does, too, crying along with his brother from inside the palace where he turns around to hide his tears into Kyungsoo’s stomach.  
  
When the trees speak again and they spot the lone flower petal in Chanyeol’s hair, their voices are soft, “your Baekhyun has left with three little peas blossoming inside his tummy like purple, cherry blossoms.”  
  
“Your mother has the book ready for you.”  
  
“Go after your happily ever after, your highness.”  
  
“Because being in love can be a beautiful thing.”  
  
He’s picking up his robes with a laugh, even though the tears hot against his cheeks and his nose is red, but he’s laughing and running towards the palace where the doors spring open as the guards wait for their king to stumble in. Just like the sight of Baekhyun interrupting the ceremony on that fateful day.  
  
It is far too cliché, Chanyeol groans, almost falling to the floor if it weren’t for Sehun helping him up just before his face could hit the marble. His brother encouragingly pats him on the back and he’s smiling, and it’s wide and it takes the people by surprise. It blossoms like the baby cherry blossoms in his hair. The king of Ignisilandia, a fiery man with more cherry blossoms in his hair than burning sparks, with many falling at his feet, lets his flowers grow.  
  
_For him._  
  
“You break our Baekhyunee’s heart one more time, and I will not let you back into this palace.” The former queen warns, and Chanyeol knows she’s not teasing as she pulls on his pointed ear.  
  
The king doesn’t have time to speak before a book is shoved into his hands, tattered pages tucked in between his calloused fingers. Each margin has a row of cherry blossoms painted on, a deep shade of pink that stands against the coloured pages and the edges are lined with gold. Then an orb of light grows in Chanyeol’s palm. He stands with his black wings hidden beneath his shoulder blades, with his gold markings glowing once before they disappear beneath his skin while his eyes turn into a cosy hue of brown, no longer gold like the fire in his hair.  
  
The florestines watch in amazement when dots of lights circle the king, and instead of cherry blossoms pooling into heaps by his feet, there are white roses instead.  
  
“Chanyeol,” his mother starts, apprehensive with a worrying smile as she tucks strands of red hair behind his ear, “if you… if you step into the human world, you may never return. Not until the next pink moon. But it is your choice, son, so choose what your heart wants the most.”  
  
The king’s smile only wavers slightly but he’s soon balling up his hands into fists, determined and holding the book closer to his chest.  
  
“It will only ever be Baekhyun.”  
  
The sparks don’t sting, not as much as his embers do, but they melt into his rough skin. Every shot of light bigger than the one before, like they know the king is about to step through the portal for the first time, through his own fairy tale written on every page. Of the king who fell for a human despite his own odds, finally finding someone to talk to the moon about as she does about the sun.  
  
Chanyeol looks up at his brothers, bemused, and they smile back endearingly with unspoken words of admiration for their oldest brother. And amongst the words, the pages he feels fading beneath his fingers, Baekhyun’s name is written six-thousand, one-hundred and fourteen times right beside Chanyeol’s, followed by I love you.  
  
“You only have to think of home to return!” Voices turn into a blur, buzzing, over the white noise, distracting him from the feeling of light against his fingertips, “even if it may not work, think of home and pull him close. It is the only way, Chanyeol.”  
  
Gold bulbs of light are left in the king’s place.  
  
“He will not be trapped on Earth if he misses the pink moon, right, mother?”  
  
“Of course not, but he does not need to know.”

 

 

~*~

 

 

“You should go home.”  
  
Baekhyun loses himself in work. It’s distracting, he thinks, picking up spoiled cupcake casings as he wipes the tables down. The sun had sent long ago and the cutesy bakery closed minutes before as Baekhyun finishes his evening shift. His studio has been left unattended, along with ruined canvases where he would paint the same face over and over again until Luhan suggested that he finds a job that is calm enough for him not to strain.  
  
There are piping bags, filled with pastel colours, resting across the counter where they’re uncapped and drying. Pinched bows and small moulds were hastily discarded when the head baker was called to the hospital because his wife’s baby was on the way. He had sent a pleading look towards Baekhyun, who smiled in return, before dashing out of the store, apron and all.  
  
A month had passed, and Baekhyun’s baby bump grew a little as the purple coloured cherry blossoms turned orange, still lined with gold. Even though he has left Ignisilandia, the flowers are still present and glowing, like a memory he’s refusing to let go off. But with a small sigh and a pat to his bump, he wanders around the store, his mind somewhere else as the other co-workers laugh in the quiet evening, throwing balls of fondant at each other. He feels warm at the sight, although his heart isn’t quite there.  
  
“Baekhyun, there’s a man out front calling for you. He insists to be let into the store even though I told him it’s closing time,” Zitao comes in from the front of the store with napkins in his hands and voice quiet. He glances down at the smaller’s tummy and talks with worry in his tone, “he seems to have a temper. Should I tell him you’re not here?”  
  
Who would be here to see him?  
  
The smaller quickly shakes his head and asks Zitao if he could clean up the last of the cake tins as he dawdles past him through the small kitchen. The taller baker nods quickly but he lingers around and steals glances in case something goes wrong. But Baekhyun is lost to the darkness of the store because the lights have been turned off and the open sign flipped over, and his frown deepens when he spots a tall figure standing outside of the bakery.  
  
Baekhyun doesn’t recognise the still pointed ears immediately, or the bowed legs and broad shoulders. The taller’s red hair is darkened under the moonlight and a little faint, but void of any sparks or flowers. He has his back turned with his hands stuffed into his pocket, and the younger still doesn’t notice. But it’s when the flowers stay still around him and he turns around, standing there without his wings, in a white top and washed jeans, smiling down at Baekhyun like a mischievous college boy. And his almond shaped eyes, coloured brown, hold the love he never lost.  
  
“Chanyeol?”  
  
“I much rather prefer Loey in the human world.”  
  
And the king is looking at him like he’s the most beautiful person he has ever seen.  
  
_Please don’t look at me like that._  
  
Baekhyun deflates under his gaze, his shoulders sagging and his heart dropping into his stomach where his three little peas try holding it up. It still burns, and he has to look away when Chanyeol reaches forward with nimble fingers tucking his hair behind his ear, fingers rough against his skin as he cradles the side of his face. The human boy has his eyes squeezed closed. It’s no use, because even through the ache he had been trying so hard to hide and through the heavy beating of his heart, one the taller man had took and broken into a state the same as his, Baekhyun still loves him.  
  
He still loves Chanyeol.  
  
“P-Please forgive me.”  
  
The younger shakes his head, “I don’t want to.”  
  
Using his thumbs to wipe away the hot tears that fall from Baekhyun’s closed eyes, to his flushed cheeks as he bites back his cries, Chanyeol rests his forehead against his. He doesn’t flinch when beautiful, brown eyes snap open to stare at him through the blur of tears. But he stares at Chanyeol like he’s done anything, even though it hurts and he’s not sure what the taller is doing here. He isn’t sure why he holds onto the king’s hands that are still cupping his face, thin fingers wrapping around the other’s palms where their glowing marks go unnoticed in the human world.  
  
He’s not sure why Chanyeol’s looking at him like he’s in love.  
  
“Then please hear what I have to say—”  
  
“I don’t think—”  
  
“This is not a movie, or a novel, neither is it a fairytale, so please just let me say this,” Chanyeol’s voice is low and broken, and Baekhyun listens, “I… I had my heart broken once before, by a human none the less. T-They promised me the stars and the moon of the Earth; I was not asking for much, but they had promised. Just like my moon had promised her love, too. I believed him, Baekhyun. I believed him when he did not love me enough to stay, so what was I supposed to do when it was the first time I had ever given my heart to someone.”  
  
Baekhyun eyes are shuttered but his fingers tighten around the taller, and he whispers, shaking his head, “I’m not him.”  
  
And he holds him tighter, “of course not. But—but I thought I could never love someone as much as I loved him, at one point I did.”  
  
“Chanyeol…”  
  
“That was… that was before you… and I have broken the boy who had not only promised me the stars and the moon, but he loved me liked like no one has loved me before.”  
  
The king confesses but he looks so lost, frantically searching through the smaller’s eyes, like he’s lost something else other than himself.  
  
“I cannot live without you, Baekhyun.”  
  
The snow falls from the blue sky, floating as frozen raindrops that fall so slowly onto the floor. In between red hair where cherry blossoms would be. They would be soft like the snow, white behind the king, basked in the glowing light of the still moon. The streetlights are stars, encased in glass and dimly lit against the snow, but they also stay still. The flowers have died, too, but even without them, Chanyeol still looks at Baekhyun like he’s in love.  
  
“You still talk like an old man.” The human blurts out, his hands falling to his sides when the taller lets go.  
  
Chanyeol just stares down at him in disbelief, “is that all you have to say?”  
  
“What? No—”  
  
“Is this your way of rejection,” the king asks, and he presses his own palm against his forehead, glancing at the shorter briefly before he’s squeezing his eyes shut, “you—you were just going to leave this fool behind. This fool who went through that darn book for you. I would do it again, as many times as I need to, for you. But do you understand how uncomfortable I feel in these clothes. They make me feel like… like those stable boys.”  
  
“Chanyeol—”  
  
“Who said love is easy?”  
  
He asks and soon he’s turning around without a word, trailing down the tiny steps that lead up to the bakery at the corner of the street. Baekhyun’s teasing, teary smile goes unnoticed and it falls, because the taller is walking away. He doesn’t know where he’s going, and Chanyeol halts in his steps when he realises that he has nowhere to go, not even a home. He’s on Earth – a place he’s never stepped foot in and never would have if it wasn’t for Baekhyun, even though he would have done it a thousand times. Too caught up in his frustration, Chanyeol doesn’t see Baekhyun trying to run after him. He only turns around as Baekhyun almost slips against the slippery snow and yelps helplessly.  
  
“Be careful!”  
  
Chanyeol isn’t given the time to run back to Baekhyun, to make sure he’s not hurt anywhere as he panics because the smaller is already closing the distance between them. He takes the king’s face in between his cold hands before the latter could say a word. But Chanyeol looks so distraught, tears in his almond eyes when Baekhyun pulls him down to look at him, tiptoeing as he does until they’re almost nose to nose. He sniffs with a reddening nose just as Baekhyun starts laughing. But it’s beautiful, and it’s okay, because this is their fairy tale.  
  
“It’s okay to cry you know, giant.”  
  
“Who says I am crying, you little squirt?”  
  
Baekhyun laughs louder against his mouth, mildly he’s baffled but happy, “excuse me, who are you calling little squirt?”  
  
And the moon smiles bright in Ignisilandia, even the moon on Earth, while the flowers rejoice as Chanyeol dips down to steal one, two, three kisses from the smaller. He plants them all over his face, from his cheeks to his closed eyes, until Baekhyun holds his by the cheeks and starts kissing away at every single tear that falls. And under Baekhyun’s hands, the markings glow. Because every single universe, they’re in love.  
  
“The man carrying our three, little peas. My husband.”

 

 

 

 

 

_~Three years later~_

 

 

“Chanhyun! Hyunbee! You two come here right now!”  
  
Two small heads of fiery red hair fly past through Baekhyun’s legs and around him, small giggles following as they tease him when he almost stumbles on the cobbled pathways. The Luminans and Pixians only watch in amusement when two boys toddle around the palace with their robes flying behind them. Smiles that glow, rosy cheeks and hair just as red as their father’s, white baby’s breath growing in between, everyone but Baekhyun and a disgruntled Kyungsoo, who is about to pop any week now, coo at the little princes.  
  
Panting with his hands on his knees, Baekhyun barely looks up and pat his daughter’s head, who walks past stuffing her second bread into her mouth. The lunar king ushers her towards the court yard as he picks up his robes and chases after his sons again, “Baekhee, just… just stay beside your uncle Luhan while I get your brothers.”  
  
But the three year olds run amuck, bumping into the maids and Florenstines as they bring out of trays of food into the court yard under the summer’s sky. It’s buzzing loudly, and there are too many Luminans around, but Hyunbee still bows diligently every time he humps into someone, his plump lips just like the king’s slurring out a sorry with a pout. He fumbles with the little crown on his head before he’s following after Chanhyun, who screams with his arms held up in the air.  
  
Baekhyun only huffs when Chanyeol finally appears form behind the palace doors, the taller shrugging his shoulder as soon as he sees his husband gesturing wildly at their sons.  
  
“You’re just going to watch them?!”  
  
“Our boys will be boys, Baekhyun.”  
  
Chanhyun takes the advantage of his parents bickering to hide beneath his uncle Jongin’s robes. The prince does nothing but pat the much smaller prince on the head and continues on eating the cake Kyungsoo had baked for the party.  
  
Hyunbee loses sight of his brother, too caught up in knobbly knees and panic that he bumps into his father’s legs, button nose squishing against Chanyeol’s slacks.  
  
The youngest Park has always been shy of his father, slightly intimidated whenever he sees the king on his throne, whereas Chanhyun and Baekhee would topple over him and knock of his crown. Even though his father would laugh heartedly with the triplets, till he had tears in his eyes and is kneeling down to their levels so they could pull at his pointed ears – something they hadn’t inherited from their father – Hyunbee would watch from behind Baekhyun’s legs.  
  
He looks up at Chanyeol with his droopy eyes widened, different from his brother and sister whose eyes are shaped like almonds. His mouth falls open, bending back his head and he gasps. Hyunbee almost trips when his father bends down to look at him questioningly, and he fidgets with his fingers like Baekhyun would.  
  
Maybe he’s too tall, or maybe because he hasn’t gotten used to the powers in Ignisilandia even though he’s been born and raised in the palace, in a room where Baekhyun had screams at Chanyeol to hurry up with the doctor. Then the king only fainted five times.  
  
Hyunbee doesn’t have much time to hide as he spots his papa storming towards him, and he scolds himself for following his brother in the first place. And without another thought, he runs into Chanyeol’s arms and hides under his father’s robes, button nose pressed into a warm chest. His little arms go around the king’s neck and he holds on for dear life. It’s the small giggle that tickles Chanyeol’s skin as he sways left and right with the youngest triplet in his arms.  
  
And then he’s looking up with crescent eyes and a rectangle smile, coupled with his rosy cheeks, just like his papa. Chanyeol laughs as Hyunbee grins widely and screams at him to run from the monster.  
  
“Quick, quick, we run from monster, daddy!”  
  
But Baekhyun quickly grabs onto Chanyeol’s ear.  
  
“The boys have missed their spell lesson with Junmyeon. I have lost Chanhyun, and I am pretty sure Baekhee has had her fifth piece of bread in the space of an hour. The guests have arrived but your mother does not have the crystal jewels for her dress. Yet you’re here, having just woken up! The moon left ages ago, Chanyeol!” The lunar king scolds. He tugs at the king’s ears before he’s plucking out loose cherry blossoms in his husband’s hair, fingers running through red hair till it’s pushed back in place, “what will I do with you.”  
  
“You mean, what will I do without you.” Chanyeol teases. He leans down quickly and steals a soft kiss from Baekhyun, who blushes bright red and gently pushes the taller’s face away so he could stop staring at him. Neither notice Hyunbee’s lock of disgust at the sight of his parent’s kissing.  
  
“Eww, daddy give papa cooties.”  
  
Chanyeol pinches his son’s nose, “is that so?”  
  
Hyunbee furiously nods his head, arms still tight around his father’s neck but he pulls his face back as he wrinkles his nose up at the two. He doesn’t get anywhere and ends up squealing in surprised because Chanyeol is littering kisses all over his tiny face. The toddler’s laughs are loud and he uses his small hands to hold his father’s face, not wanting anymore kisses. That is until Chanhyun scrambles out from beneath Jongin’s robes and demands kisses of his own from his parents.  
  
“Chanhyun like cooties. Daddy and papa can give Chanhyun cooties. Chanhyun don’t mind.”  
  
“They are definitely your boys,” Baekhyun starts as he picks up the oldest triplet into his arms before they’re walking down the stone steps and into the courtyard where the Florenstines are fumbling around with trays off food under Kyungsoo’s order. The smaller doesn’t notice the king halting in his steps, chattering away to himself, “like father, like sons—why does Baekhee have dahlias in her hair?!”  
  
The lunar king’s horrified scream has everyone startled. It has Jongin tripping up over his chair and Sehun laughing loudly in the corner, seemingly appearing out of nowhere. All the Luminans and Florenstines turn to look at the little princess as she sits beside the Pixians, sharing little crumbs of her bread and oblivious to the stares directed at her. Baekhyun stares with his hands dragging across his cheeks, until Baekhee’s eyes widen at the sight of cut watermelons on one of the dining tables. The dahlias are tiny in her hair but they blossom beautifully like every other flower.  
  
“Wateemelons! Baekhee got wateemelons!” She screams, her almond eyes blinking in a stupor and her dimple is in place when she smiles.  
  
Baekhyun turns to stare at Chanyeol accusingly, “our daughter is in love with food.”  
  
Sehun laughs harder and Luhan goes to swat him around the head.  
  
The king muses, shocked just like his husband but he’s staring at Baekhyun, shrugging again, “at least it is not with another princess or prince she is in love with.”  
  
“Food, Chanyeol. Food! She is in love with food!”  
  
“Baekhyun—”  
  
“I told you not to give her snacks in between her meals. Now she has a big appetite and has fallen in love with food. Food does not have feelings once she’s eaten it. This doesn’t include the screaming food, definitely not those.”  
  
“Baekhyun—”  
  
“Oh my goodness! What if she’s left heartbroken?! What if… what if she realises that food can’t love her back?”  
  
“Baekhyun—”  
  
“This is all your fault—”  
  
“I love you.”  
  
Baekhyun stills, blinking up at his husband with his arms frozen in the air from where he was waving them around wildly, ready to pull his hair out. His frustration, however, simmers down as soon as Chanyeol looks at him a smile, soft just like his eyes, but the light in them dances around teasingly. The Florenstines laugh, too, as the younger stutters, watching as their king leans down so Baekhyun can’t look away.  
  
The human shrugs but his heart is loud against his chest and he’s sure Chanyeol can hear it. So he pouts and shuffles around in his spot, “well, I love you, too.”  
  
“Baekhyun—”  
  
“But that is not the point! Our daughter has fallen in love with food. She has dahlias in her hair—“  
  
“Baekhyun, stop talking.”  
  
The lunar king is baffled once again, flabbergasted as he stares up at Chanyeol. His husband is still grinning. And he splutters out incoherent words when the triplets run off to the fountain, and he’s ready to chase after them again when Chanyeol suddenly pulls him back by the waist.  
  
With his head dipped down and a hand cupping Baekhyun’s face, the king suddenly kisses him as he holds him tight. He kisses his happily ever after while the sun sings above, and the moon joins him like she does once a year. Baekhyun finds himself laughing into their kiss, his smile pressed against Chanyeol’s own, and the blue cherry blossoms grow in his own dark hair.  
  
“Chanyeol,” a hum, “I love you.”  
  
Fingers intertwined and caressing the small growing bump underneath the smaller’s shirt, Chanyeol lets Baekhyun pick at the petals in his hair, his heart burning in a wonderful way as he holds him closer.  
  
“I love you, Baekhyun,” he whispers, “more than I could have ever imagined.”


End file.
